Dow's Dive Sparks Federal Investigation

The federal regulators that oversee financial markets say they are investigating the causes of the mass sell-off Thursday that pushed the Dow Jones Industrial average down hundreds of points. They are identifying one possible cause: Conflicting trading rules for different markets.

(Scroll down to see a graphic of how Wall Street acted Thursday)

The Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission say they are reviewing data related to Thursday's trading frenzy. They are looking at information from exchanges, self-regulatory groups and market participants. They say they will make any necessary changes to prevent the problem from recurring.

The SEC and CFTC have ultimate oversight of financial markets, but they generally rely on the markets to write and enforce their own rules.

More Wall Street Coverage

Stocks Falter after Wild Day, Europe Woes Linger
Greek Debt, Trader Error Eyed in Market Sell-Off
Forbes: Reaction and Insight
Market Mayhem
Panic: Greece to Wall Street

(CBS)

[johnny465]

This is just a trial run on new creative ways for wall street to rob the working people of there hard earned money for retirement

[apuan777]

Unless you liquidated at the low and bought at the high...it was just on paper and nothing happened to your investment. Don't be a moron.

[longtree-2009]

FBI and other federal agencies need to investigate thoroughly. it might have been caused by hackers, cyber-terrorists, disgruntled software employees, someone who was paid big bucks to make it fail, china's hackers, terrorist groups here or abroad. someone benefited from the failure, someone may have been testing security. it started, then stopped all on its own. someone may have found a way to make billions by encouraging investors to sell. we should not take this lightly as it could very well ruin our economy.

[010sonny]

Chaos,Panic,Disorder; Now who could the suspects be? Wall Street / elite sending a message? Observe what we can do, at the snap of our finger..Be thee ware....

[sjc_1]

This is NOT suppose to happen in a modern stock market. The "circuit breaker" rules are almost 23 years old, they were put in place after the 1987 stock market crash. The 90 second trading freeze just caused them to take the trades to NASDAQ. If you put the "breakers" on NASDAQ then they would just go to some other market in Asia or elsewhere. Some large traders got caught in currency futures surges and had to sell at a discount. Everything is connected and that is the problem that makes it all more likely to crash when panic sets in.

[fiberglass3]

It is really great to see oil at just over $ 75.00 / barrel. It's still to high but more in line with what is needed to get us back on the road to recovery.

[us_1776]

This type of irrational market behavior further erodes people's confidence in our financial system. These types of events must be prevented. I'm sure there were a number of substantial losses suffered by many investors because of this situation.

[LIBERALS-are-HYPOCRITES-2]

If it goes up "OBAMA fixed it"

If it continues to drop Bush/Cheney/greedy wall street bankers broke it