re: Do you remember the infamous "Flash Crash" that happened almost 15 years ago?

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Zero bids meant, technically, IBM had a market cap of $0.00.

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This reminds me of one the market wizards book (I forget which one), but he recalls starting out during this time period and during that crash everyone was panicking as you said. He mentioned befuddled to his colleague that X ticker was showing bid price at $Y on his teletron, when they said no bids. And his colleague told him "Sell it to your computer then!"

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So most of those transactions were simply erased?

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I don't remember there being any large reversal of trades. Of course, that was way before the internet where we could search for such information immediately.

Back then timely news, other than a Bloomberg feed over an analog line displaying on a green screen with slow moving, greener alpha-numeric characters, was getting the Wall Street Journal delivered the next day.

I don't know if you remember about Alan Greenspan's 10/19/1987 story as was described in the book about Greenspan called Maestro.

Greenspan, then the Fed Chairman, left Washington, DC early that Monday afternoon to fly to Dallas to give a speech.

When he left DC the DJ30 Index was down about 100 points which was, as I recall, about -4.5% percent, a pretty drastic drop itself.

Without Blackberries or other personal communication devices Greenspan was out of touch with what the market was doing during the 2-3 hour flight. (Sounds silly now that such a thing was possible just those few short years ago.)

His plane landed in Dallas just after 3 PM Central time so just after the NY markets closed.

When Greenspan saw the Dallas Fed President in the terminal who was meeting him, Greenspan's first words to him were, "How did the market close?"

The Dallas Fed President replied, "The Dow was down five oh eight."

Greenspan said, "Oh, that's a relief, down just 5.08 points!" He was thinking there had been a nice recovery in the market in the afternoon.

"Uh, no, Mr. Chairman...down five HUNDRED and eight points, or -22%."

Greenspan got to a private phone and started the process of calling a Fed Board emergency telephone meeting.

The result of the meeting was Greenspan released a statement the next day that simply said, ""The Federal Reserve, consistent with its responsibilities as the Nation's central bank, affirmed today its readiness to serve as a source of liquidity to support the economic and financial system."

And it did...

(Greenspan had insisted on a brief statement so as to avoid any misunderstandings.)

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I don’t believe any security can trade at $0 on any exchange. No bids means it doesn’t trade at all.

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Well, I can tell you point blank that some of the trades were not at "$0 on the exchange." Nor could there have been a turn around in the market at its nadir w/o counterparty participation.

Doesn't matter much at this stage, but I was more interested in whether "remedy" was afforded at base, or near base, level transactions. It sounds like the answer is "no."

Russian is talking about 1987. There was no turnaround midday that day. Idk if you’re confusing the flash crash with 87 or if I’m confused.

Was that the event that Michael Lewis' Flash Boys was about? Good book.

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Was that the event that Michael Lewis' Flash Boys was about?

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I haven't read that book. Sorry.

Interesting. I do my regular scheduled investment through work retirement. But when there are market downturns I find myself scrambling to put cash into my brokerage account to try to buy on the red days.