4 ms·

Stock halted. Bracing for a crash. This will be bad.

bdcravens 13y ago
I'm seeing that trading will resume at 3:25 pm ET (in about 10 minutes from time I'm writing this). Grab your popcorn!
derwiki 13y ago
This is the first I've seen a stock's trading being halted. Does anyone know more about the mechanics of how this works? What the advantages/disadvantages are?
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- chollida1 13y ago
  Stocks get halted all the time. Sometimes for news, sometimes due to a fat finger, sometimes due to market volatility. What normally happens in the case of news is that the stock will be halted before the news comes out and then the stock will reopen sometime after the news so that everyone has a chance to digest the news. In the case of a fat finger or market crash things are a little different. In that case trads can be undone, meaning that if you bought as the stock crashed you could get your trade busted. After the trades have been undone, the exchanges make sure there is adequate liquidity on either side of the book and trading resumes. This second case is a bitch for automated trading systems as we(the designers) don't often take this into account and even less frequently get a chance to test this case in the wild.
- jarcoal 13y ago
  It often happens after huge news, and it's meant to give investors time to digest it. I believe the last notable instance was after Jobs died, AAPL was halted.
  - chollida1 13y ago
    > I believe the last notable instance was after Jobs died, AAPL was halted. That depends on your definition of notable. You could always use the "no true Scotsman" logic to say that Steve Jobs death was the last "notable" halt but they happen all the time. here is the Nasdaq list of halts. Notice that there have been 3 halts already today. http://www.nasdaqtrader.com/Trader.aspx?id=Tradehalts http://www.nasdaqtrader.com/Trader.aspx?id=Tradehalts Here is a list of IROC halts( Canadian) http://micro.newswire.ca/70886-0.html http://micro.newswire.ca/70886-0.html Note that there have been 4 halts today for Canadian stocks.
    - jarcoal 13y ago
      Hah I knew I would get called on that. Let's change it to "the first one that came to my mind"
    - RobAtticus 13y ago
      In fact, Zynga's stock was halted multiple times a little over a year ago when Facebook IPO'd. Also, the halt for Jobs death was after hours so it had a smaller impact.
- necrecious 13y ago
  I think it can be triggered automatically when a major shift happens in a stock. I remember a few of these back in the 2000s when things were crashing left and right.
- freehunter 13y ago
  Stock trading can be halted after big news is released to prevent a panic. It gives the traders enough time to cool down after hearing bad news so they don't all sell at once. If there's any chance to prevent a crash, a stock halt will help. The crash can still happen, of course.
- gaius 13y ago
  If a stock falls by x% in time t, it's automagic.
- jamestnz 13y ago
  It is typical to briefly halt trading in a stock, if a company makes an announcement (or undergoes an unexpected external event) likely to have a non-trivial effect on its stock price. This is to allow time for significant news to disseminate into the marketplace. For this reason, you will frequently see companies make major announcements outside of trading hours.
jbigelow76 13y ago
The trading halt caught my eye too. Who decides when a stock get's halted to stop it from tanking? If there's a legit system issue with the trading market that the Zynga has no control over sure, I get that, but to keep traders from reacting to the state of the company and/or market itself is pretty shifty.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- chollida1 13y ago
  >Who decides when a stock get's halted to stop it from tanking? It's partially automated and partially up to the primary market. Each exchange has circuit breakers for detecting large drops in both the stock's price in a short time period and a drop in liquidity. These are also known as non regulatory halts. Additionally for material news leaks like this there is a mechanism to manually halt trading. These are known as regulatory halts.
  - Jabbles 13y ago
    http://www.nasdaqtrader.com/Trader.aspx?id=Tradehalts http://www.nasdaqtrader.com/Trader.aspx?id=Tradehalts http://www.nasdaqtrader.com/Trader.aspx?id=tradehaltcodes http://www.nasdaqtrader.com/Trader.aspx?id=tradehaltcodes LUDP - Volatility Trading Pause Looks like the circuit breakers were responsible. Edit: Oh, there were two!
    - chollida1 13y ago
      No you're looking at the 15:29:51 halt, which is a circuit breaker. We were discussing the T3 halt at 14:48:44 which is due to pending news.
- trotsky 13y ago
  while there are any number of reasons a trading halt can occur, few of them are particularly beneficial to zynga. In this case the most likely candidate is public disclosure requirements by the SEC. It is tricky to announce things uniformly across a multitide of outlets, sometimes a press release will go out early and the company will ask for a halt until they can get the rest out. In this case it looks like marketwatch had the news at 2:48 but zynga's official press release didn't hit until 2:52.
tlrobinson 13y ago
I was wondering why it was still up 0.3% today...
outworlder 13y ago
I feel like an astronomer who got advance warning of a supernova...

I'm seeing that trading will resume at 3:25 pm ET (in about 10 minutes from time I'm writing this). Grab your popcorn!

This is the first I've seen a stock's trading being halted. Does anyone know more about the mechanics of how this works? What the advantages/disadvantages are?

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
chollida1 13y ago
Stocks get halted all the time. Sometimes for news, sometimes due to a fat finger, sometimes due to market volatility. What normally happens in the case of news is that the stock will be halted before the news comes out and then the stock will reopen sometime after the news so that everyone has a chance to digest the news. In the case of a fat finger or market crash things are a little different. In that case trads can be undone, meaning that if you bought as the stock crashed you could get your trade busted. After the trades have been undone, the exchanges make sure there is adequate liquidity on either side of the book and trading resumes. This second case is a bitch for automated trading systems as we(the designers) don't often take this into account and even less frequently get a chance to test this case in the wild.
jarcoal 13y ago
It often happens after huge news, and it's meant to give investors time to digest it. I believe the last notable instance was after Jobs died, AAPL was halted.
- chollida1 13y ago
  > I believe the last notable instance was after Jobs died, AAPL was halted. That depends on your definition of notable. You could always use the "no true Scotsman" logic to say that Steve Jobs death was the last "notable" halt but they happen all the time. here is the Nasdaq list of halts. Notice that there have been 3 halts already today. http://www.nasdaqtrader.com/Trader.aspx?id=Tradehalts http://www.nasdaqtrader.com/Trader.aspx?id=Tradehalts Here is a list of IROC halts( Canadian) http://micro.newswire.ca/70886-0.html http://micro.newswire.ca/70886-0.html Note that there have been 4 halts today for Canadian stocks.
  - jarcoal 13y ago
    Hah I knew I would get called on that. Let's change it to "the first one that came to my mind"
  - RobAtticus 13y ago
    In fact, Zynga's stock was halted multiple times a little over a year ago when Facebook IPO'd. Also, the halt for Jobs death was after hours so it had a smaller impact.
necrecious 13y ago
I think it can be triggered automatically when a major shift happens in a stock. I remember a few of these back in the 2000s when things were crashing left and right.
freehunter 13y ago
Stock trading can be halted after big news is released to prevent a panic. It gives the traders enough time to cool down after hearing bad news so they don't all sell at once. If there's any chance to prevent a crash, a stock halt will help. The crash can still happen, of course.
gaius 13y ago
If a stock falls by x% in time t, it's automagic.
jamestnz 13y ago
It is typical to briefly halt trading in a stock, if a company makes an announcement (or undergoes an unexpected external event) likely to have a non-trivial effect on its stock price. This is to allow time for significant news to disseminate into the marketplace. For this reason, you will frequently see companies make major announcements outside of trading hours.

jbigelow76 13y ago

The trading halt caught my eye too. Who decides when a stock get's halted to stop it from tanking? If there's a legit system issue with the trading market that the Zynga has no control over sure, I get that, but to keep traders from reacting to the state of the company and/or market itself is pretty shifty.

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
chollida1 13y ago
>Who decides when a stock get's halted to stop it from tanking? It's partially automated and partially up to the primary market. Each exchange has circuit breakers for detecting large drops in both the stock's price in a short time period and a drop in liquidity. These are also known as non regulatory halts. Additionally for material news leaks like this there is a mechanism to manually halt trading. These are known as regulatory halts.
- Jabbles 13y ago
  http://www.nasdaqtrader.com/Trader.aspx?id=Tradehalts http://www.nasdaqtrader.com/Trader.aspx?id=Tradehalts http://www.nasdaqtrader.com/Trader.aspx?id=tradehaltcodes http://www.nasdaqtrader.com/Trader.aspx?id=tradehaltcodes LUDP - Volatility Trading Pause Looks like the circuit breakers were responsible. Edit: Oh, there were two!
  - chollida1 13y ago
    No you're looking at the 15:29:51 halt, which is a circuit breaker. We were discussing the T3 halt at 14:48:44 which is due to pending news.
trotsky 13y ago
while there are any number of reasons a trading halt can occur, few of them are particularly beneficial to zynga. In this case the most likely candidate is public disclosure requirements by the SEC. It is tricky to announce things uniformly across a multitide of outlets, sometimes a press release will go out early and the company will ask for a halt until they can get the rest out. In this case it looks like marketwatch had the news at 2:48 but zynga's official press release didn't hit until 2:52.

tlrobinson 13y ago

I was wondering why it was still up 0.3% today...

outworlder 13y ago

I feel like an astronomer who got advance warning of a supernova...