What a stew!
Throw into the pot a:
1) ban on short sales in financials, with
2) an announcement of an RTC-type organization to buy the bad debt;
3) sprinkle in a quadruple-witching expiration, and you have a stew of volume and volatility like no one has ever seen.
Record volume: just under 1 billion shares were traded on the NYSE floor in the first half hour of trading today. The previous record was about 808 million shares in the first half hour.
We will almost certainly pass the all-time record volume of 10.2 billion shares of NYSE-listed stocks changing hands, a record which we hit...yesterday!
Specialists saw volume 5 to 20 times normal at the open, depending on the stock. One last stat and I'll go: the Dow moved 1,025 points from its low yesterday to it's high this morning.
_____________________________
New from CNBC.com:
_____________________________
Questions? Comments? tradertalk@cnbc.com
