Algo Trading Blamed for Monday’s Market Crash

The first thing to know about the stock market’s eye-watering slide Monday is that it wasn’t caused by anything fundamental.

There was no particular piece of news that drove the major averages to capsize, in a move that sent the Dow industrials off more than 1,500 points — a new intraday record — briefly in the final hour of trading.

Instead, the market took on a mind of its own, where sentiment and likely some computer-programmed trading sent Wall Street into a bizarre tizzy. Fear brewed over a number of issues, with the biggest being trepidation about rising interest rates even though government bond yields actually were lower on the day.



“Panic is already starting to set in, which is kind of incredible when you actually think about it,” said Michael Yoshikami, CEO at Destination Wealth Management. “The S&P is trading where it was in sometime in December. So it’s not like we’re retracing an entire 12 months of returns here. I think investors are just understandably nervous. It probably is programmed trading kicking in at this point.”

Others blamed the Fed for the market breakdown, or least the mentality that led to the selling climate.

via CNBC

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Alfonso Esparza

Alfonso Esparza

Senior Currency Analyst at Market Pulse
Alfonso Esparza specializes in macro forex strategies for North American and major currency pairs. Upon joining OANDA in 2007, Alfonso Esparza established the MarketPulseFX blog and he has since written extensively about central banks and global economic and political trends. Alfonso has also worked as a professional currency trader focused on North America and emerging markets. He has been published by The MarketWatch, Reuters, the Wall Street Journal and The Globe and Mail, and he also appears regularly as a guest commentator on networks including Bloomberg and BNN. He holds a finance degree from the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education (ITESM) and an MBA with a specialization on financial engineering and marketing from the University of Toronto.
Alfonso Esparza