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An expert says a failed systems upgrade forced the New York Stock Exchange to halt trading on Wednesday. Two weeks ago, the New York Stock Exchange told trading firms and other subscribers that it would be discontinuing some of its legacy systems. Apparently, the fix disconnected the entire NYSE. The NYSE has not yet confirmed why trading on the exchange had been halted on Wednesday morning. It has said that it was the result of technical issues and did not offer any further elaboration. But Eric Scott Hunsader, an expert in Wall Street trading systems who heads market data firm...

The hacker group Anonymous posted this last night: "Wonder if tomorrow is going to be bad for Wall Street.... we can only hope." And Gawker posted this: ITEM: The New York City subway system suffered an atrocious commute today, with some trains being inexplicably stranded in stations for long periods of time. ITEM: The website “The Dissolve” folded today. ITEM: United Airlines was forced to ground all of its flights after its computer system mysteriously stopped working. ITEM: The New York Stock Exchange suspended trading today after its computerized trading system mysteriously stopped working. ITEM: Immediately after, the Wall Street...

First United Airlines today now then The Stock Exchange Earlier I noticed this Morning Apple Music was down. Then Zero Hedge was down earlier. Now the Wall Street Journal is down.

Goldman Sachs helped the Greek government to mask the true extent of its deficit with the help of a derivatives deal that legally circumvented the EU Maastricht deficit rules. At some point the so-called cross currency swaps will mature, and swell the country's already bloated deficit. Greeks aren't very welcome in the Rue Alphones Weicker in Luxembourg. It's home to Eurostat, the European Union's statistical office. The number crunchers there are deeply annoyed with Athens. Investigative reports state that important data "cannot be confirmed" or has been requested but "not received." Creative accounting took priority when it came to totting...

Former NFL player Mark Rubin, who beat Olympic gold medalist Michael Phelps in swimming as a kid, captured the title of "Wall Street's Best Athlete" on Sunday at the Wall Street Decathlon for the fourth consecutive year. Rubin, 29, is a futures and options trader who will be starting a new job at ICAP. He previously worked as a vice president at Barclays. In a span of four hours, Rubin and other athletes in the financial-services industry completed a 400-meter run, football throw, pull-ups, 40-yard dash, dips, 500-meter row, vertical jump, 20-yard shuttle, bench press, and 800-meter run. Rubin, a...

For years, when it came to presidential candidates, Wall Street made huge compromises in order to support the Republican Party. The money men in New York City set aside their socially liberal views in order to support fiscally conservative candidates because that was the only way to get on the same page as the GOP base. The result has been a series of candidates Wall Street's big donors didn't really want. It seems those donors are getting tired of that outcome.

Wall Street wants Michael Bloomberg to run for president, but the billionaire isn't budging. At the Yale CEO Summit this week, the talk was of "drafting Bloomberg" however possible. The former New York City mayor seems like the perfect solution for Wall Street's problems with the current field of presidential candidates. The Street sees him as a centrist technocrat who adeptly managed one of the most complex cities in the world. They think he understands the global business community. Rumblings about a Bloomberg run are especially strong at several bulge bracket banks, including Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Merrill once...

It wasn't greed that caused the mortgage mess. In large part, the mess was the product of government policies designed to increase home ownership among the poor and ethnic minorities. Today Peter Wallison points out how Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the FHA created a demand for bad mortgages that encouraged mortgage brokers to generate millions of them. From the Wall Street Journal: Mortgage brokers had to be able to sell their mortgages to someone. They could only produce what those above them in the distribution chain wanted to buy. In other words, they could only respond to demand, not...

BEIJING — The International Monetary Fund no longer believes China’s tightly controlled currency is undervalued, an IMF official said Tuesday, a stance that might help Beijing in its wrangling with Washington over exchange rate controls. The IMF’s first deputy managing director, David Lipton, also said Beijing should work toward having a floating exchange rate in two to three years. The United States has long accused of China of suppressing the value of its yuan, giving its exporters an unfair price advantage and hurting foreign competitors. The IMF had considered the yuan undervalued — a source of tension between the fund...

As of this week, Citicorp, JPMorgan Chase, Barclays and Royal Bank of Scotland are felons, having pleaded guilty on Wednesday to criminal charges of conspiring to rig the value of the world’s currencies. According to the Justice Department, the lengthy and lucrative conspiracy enabled the banks to pad their profits without regard to fairness, the law or the public good. Besides the criminal label, however, nothing much has changed for the banks. And that means nothing much has changed for the public. There is no meaningful accountability in the plea deals and, by extension, no meaningful deterrence from future wrongdoing....

Imagine a hotel room at the Plaza Hotel, shopping at Bloomingdales and dining at the Rainbow Room in Benghazi. Yes Benghazi, after all the most feared leader, Muammar Gaddafi is dead and all is calm after the attack on American interests in 2012. So, never let a good crisis go to waste. Libya had and has a deadly history where some elites had high aspirations for a new Libya. Trey Gowdy, the Chairman of the Benghazi Commission likely has some documented trails on Hillary’s future dreams for Libya, but you don’t and should know even more of the story. Libya,...

After a rough start to the year, economists are counting on the U.S. to bounce back in 2015 much like it did in 2014. Forecasters in the latest Wall Street Journal survey estimated the U.S. economy contracted at a 0.3% pace in the first quarter because of hits from winter weather and the West Coast port slowdown. But the panel, on average, sees annualized economic growth of 2.8% in the second quarter, supported by stronger job gains and wage growth. They also see the drag from weak trade and a strong dollar dissipating by the second half, delivering average economic...

Another market disruption from higher interest rates is virtually certain, according to former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan. "Just remember we had the 'taper tantrum.' And we're going to get another one," Greenspan said Wednesday at the Global Private Equity Conference in Washington, DC. "This is a very tough period to get through," he added about the Fed increasing interest rates. "Normalization is great, but the process of getting there is going to be very rocky." Greenspan said there was no way to get around bond market volatility but said it was necessary to help the Fed and other central...

Presidential candidate Ted Cruz, a Tea Party favorite and leading figure in the 2013 government shutdown that rattled investors, isn’t the kind of politician who usually wins a lot of friends among Wall Street campaign donors. The freshman Republican senator from Texas has none of the moderate tendencies that financiers often prefer in presidential candidates. Cruz relishes his image as an anti-establishment figure and boasts of his aversion to compromise. He has vowed to abolish the Internal Revenue Service and repeal President Barack Obama’s signature healthcare plan, commonly known as Obamacare. Despite the uncompromising rhetoric, Cruz is winning praise from...

The U.S. won’t put a dent into poverty and income inequity unless Democrats and Republicans can agree to raise taxes on top earners like hedge-fund and private equity managers, President Barack Obama said Tuesday. Obama, whose longstanding proposal to raise taxes on what is known as carried interest has gained little traction in Congress, said fairness demands that the nation’s wealthiest pitch in as more and more Americans are falling behind. “If I were able to close that loophole, I’d be able to invest in early childhood education,” Obama said at a poverty summit at Georgetown University in Washington. “If...

The doomsayers always come out whenever stock markets get more volatile, like they have this month. These gloomy prophets go on and on about how derivatives are going to cause another financial crisis, or how valuations are stretched, or how equities will collapse whenever interest rates rise. Individual investors read the commentary by these experts and wonder if they should adjust their portfolios, or even sell everything and wait out the impending collapse. But before you do that, take a moment to calm down and have another think. In every single one of our 30 years in the business, someone,...

Historic slowdown looms as GOP fiscal policy lets economy choke Warning bells just keep getting louder and louder as the countdown to the Crash of 2016 keeps ticking. Wall Street’s in denial, but the Washington Post warns: “U.S. economic growth slows to 0.2 percent, grinding nearly to a halt.” USA Today hears “Bubble Talk” at the Vegas “Davos for Geeks.” Earlier the Wall Street Journal warned, “declining population could reduce global economic growth by 40%.” Then recently the “slow-growth Fed” was blamed. Wrong, former Fed chief Ben Bernanke counterattacked: “I’m waiting for the Journal to argue for a well-structured program...

U.S. job growth likely rebounded last month and the unemployment rate probably dropped to a near seven-year low, signs of a pick up in economic momentum that could keep the Federal Reserve on track to hike interest rates this year. Nonfarm payrolls likely jumped by 224,000 after increasing by 126,000 in March, according to a Reuters survey of economists. The jobless rate is seen dropping one-tenth of a percentage point to 5.4 percent, which would be the lowest since May 2008. The Labor Department will release its closely followed employment report at 8:30 a.m. (1230 GMT) on Friday. "Our view...

Fed chief Janet Yellen rattled the stock market Wednesday when she said "equity market valuations at this point generally are quite high," saying that raises "potential dangers." She added that she doesn't see "the hallmarks of a bubble," but stocks retreated from opening gains and traded lower, though the major averages closed off intraday lows. Are stocks overvalued? After a six-year bull market, a correction should be expected, although the odds favor a more garden variety downturn of 20% or so over a period of several months, not the painful free-falls of 2000-02 or 2008. Wednesday's selling prompted IBD to...

This past year's choppy indecisive unstable investment market continues as last Friday's IBD down grades our week-old uptrend back to "market under pressure".  Last week's rosy close turned sour for both the S&P500 and the NASDAQ as the major indexes immediately began a week of declines only to turn back up after the outlook was downgraded.  Precious metals weren't immune to the chaos either as they too stammered and fell back toward bases reached last Oct.That's been pretty much the story of the past half-year with market uncertainty taking over.  The irony is that it's actually been a pretty...