What in the world is happening to our financial markets? Trading on the Nasdaq was halted on Thursday for more than 3 hours, and the only formal explanation that we got was that it was a “technical issue”. On Tuesday, Goldman Sachs made thousands of “erroneous trades” that are now being canceled. If those trades had not been canceled, it could have cost Goldman “hundreds of millions of dollars” according to the Wall Street Journal. How nice for them that they get a “do over”. When Knight Capital made a similar “trading error”, they were not so fortunate. Our financial system has become completely and totally dependent on computers, and that means that it is extremely vulnerable. After what we have witnessed this week, how can they actually expect us to have faith in these financial markets? And what happens if these “technical issues” get even worse?
The stoppage on the Nasdaq on Thursday was unprecedented. Trading in literally thousands of stocks and options was halted. Big names like Apple, Netflix, Intel and Facebook were affected.
As of right now, officials are not telling us what caused the “technical issue”, but there are rumblings that hacking was involved.
And the Nasdaq would hardly be the first exchange to be hacked. In fact, according to NBC News, about half of all the security exchanges around the world were hacked last year.
USA Today is suggesting that a group of Iranian hackers known as “Cyber Fighters of Izz ad-Din al-Qassam” may be responsible for what happened to the Nasdaq. Apparently they have been quite active since last September…
