New York – Adopting new, U.S. market-wide circuit breakers to halt precipitous drops in individual stocks is “a done deal,” a source said Tuesday, five days after a severe market plunge rattled investors and perplexed regulators.
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The circuit breakers would likely trip when individual stocks fell by a set amount in a set time frame.
The Securities and Exchange Commission hosted exchange heads at a meeting Monday, and said afterward the parties agreed to a framework that would strengthen circuit breakers.
The report comes as senior executives from NYSE Euronext and CME Group will testify to a congressional panel on Tuesday on last week’s shock sell-off in the stock markets, according to a witness list obtained by Reuters.
Slated to testify are NYSE Euronext Chief Operating Officer Lawrence Leibowitz, CME Executive Chairman Terrence Duffy and Nasdaq Transaction Services Executive Vice President Eric Noll, according to the list.
Also appearing will be U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Mary Schapiro and U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chairman Gary Gensler, it said.
Good move. This is the most important change to the market since the Great Depression. It effectively prevents the speculative destruction of a company by a panic in the market.