Stock Market Drops Nearly 1000 Points, Rebounds (But Not All the Way)

I'm a small-time dabbler in the stock market, so while at work, I have a small stock ticker running on my screen. I glance at it from time to time, and don't get very alarmed at 150+ point sways. . .the market has been way crazy for a long time now.  On Thursday afternoon, they went full-bore insane, and it happened so quickly I missed it. And I'm glad I did, because if I'd seen the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunge almost 1000 points in just a few short minutes, I doubt I'd have been able to eat lunch.

Whatever happened--a fumble-fingered stock broker typing billion instead of million?--it raises a huge flag. How the hell are we that close to the edge?  Obviously, some kind of mistake occurred, whether it was that broker or something else. But that mistake rocked the financial world, and will probably have lasting effects. I mean how would you like it if you bought a few thousand shares when they hit rock-bottom, made out like a bandit, and then they took it away from you?

[Excerpt]

US stock plunge raises alarm on algo trading

A spine-chilling slide of nearly 1,000 points in the Dow Jones Industrial Average, its biggest intraday points drop ever, led to heightened calls for a crackdown on computer-driven high-frequency trading.

The slide, which in one 10-minute stretch knocked the index down nearly 700 points, may have been triggered by a trading error. Major stock indexes eventually recovered from their 9 percent drops to close down a little more than 3 percent. . .

Read more at: Reuters