What a tragedy! In a single day, the Dow fell 1,000 points, made a recovery, then closed at 347 points down. What could cause something like this to happen? It’s being said that it was just a computer glitch. Or it could have been someone clicking the 1 Billion button on their desktop instead of the 1 Million button. What makes it possible for a $42 stock to sell for one cent for a few minutes during a trading day? Was this really an error, or could this have been stock market manipulation?

Are we going to impose new rules and regulations into the stock market, or will this behavior continue and worsen? How can we continue to invest in the stock market with confidence if at any moment we could possibly lose our life savings simply through a loophole in the online trading system?

At one point today that VIX had risen over 66 percent. Online brokerage platforms were down for nearly a full hour. There was nobody to call. There was nothing we could do. Our life savings were completely out of our hands. Billions of dollars were lost by retail investors due to this technological meltdown. Many investors will be forced to sell their homes.

Since Institutions have the ability to make thousands of trades per second using the internet, with the click of a button, anyone can cause the Dow to drop another 1,000 points. This is a serious problem. Is the stock market really that easy to manipulate? The financial welfare of a nation hanging in the balance at the mercy of a single mouse click! One can only hope new regulations are put in place immediately to prevent something like this from ever happening again. In all honesty, I think new regulations should be implemented and all transactions today should be reversed, and that trade should start up again based on the final prints from May 5th.

May 6, 2010 is definitely a date for the history books as one of the worse days in stock market history. Regardless of it being a software glitch or if it was some type of manipulation allowed by today’s trading technology, this situation must be handled and taken care of if we investors are to continue investing in the stock market with confidence.

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