Securities test

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The SIA had a test, and proclaimed it a success: no problems in 2000 with stock trades. Why has NOBODY commented on it?

Was it all lies?

Was it proof that someone has remediated successfully?

Somebody please comment on what it means

-- walt (walt@lcs.k12.ne.us), May 25, 1999

Answers

Apparently, because it classifies as self-reporting, even though it is fairly good news, it cannot be trusted. Did I get that right, folks? Seems a ridiculous way to look at good news, but what can you do with skeptics..

P.S. Are you a fellow Nebraskan, Walt?

-- newlurker (no@no.com), May 25, 1999.


Reckon so, Lincoln

Shamless self-promotion on

See the website my class produced.

Nothing to do with Y2K, my thoughts on that subject are also available.

Promotion off

Seriously, I wish people would comment on the SIA test.

-- walt (walt@lcs.k12.ne.us), May 25, 1999.


Oops, missed the web address. Sorry!

-- walt (walt@lcs.k12.ne.us), May 25, 1999.

Check the links here... <:)=

Securities Industry Passes Year 2000 Tests

-- Sysman (y2kboard@yahoo.com), May 25, 1999.


Sure the Stock Market passed all it's Y2K tests, one day ahead of the Newt Gingrich becoming a Democrat!

-- Richard Westerlind (Astral-Acres@webtv.net), May 25, 1999.


Richard:

Maybe so, but you gotta admit they did one hell of a fine job of fabricating all those data.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), May 25, 1999.


Hummm, also in Yahoo news today... <:)=

Wall Street Expects The Best For Y2K, Plans For Worst

NEW YORK (Reuters) - With seven months until the Year 2000, Wall Street Tuesday said it has conquered the once dreaded Year 2000 (Y2K) computer problem and outlined plans to deal with foreign shockwaves or glitches that could still arise.

The Securities Industry Association (SIA) laid out complex contingency plans -- a kind of Y2K survival guide -- for U.S. financial firms in an inch-thick report, released Tuesday.

The report details measures as simple as having all hands on deck Dec. 31, to limiting trading activity around the New Year to what is commercially essential.

Brimming with confidence, Goldman Sachs & Co. Managing Director Gerald Corrigan prefaced the report by saying Y2K contingency planning did not mean problems were expected.

``I feel very confident, overall, as we sit here 7 months from this date change,'' Corrigan, chairman of the SIA's Y2K contingency planning committee, told reporters at Goldman Sachs' downtown Manhattan headquarters.

``But you can't ignore the problems, as remote as they may be.''

The Y2K computer problem stems from glitches that can arise in older computers and software programs which only allow two digits for the year in dates. Unless the systems are fixed or replaced, the year 2000 may be read as 1900, causing computers to crash or spew out bad data.

The financial sector is one of the best prepared of any to face Y2K and U.S. financial companies are further ahead than any in the world.

Investor confidence, Corrigan said, also appears well up from 6 to 9 months ago. He gave the example of an abatement in trades to try and exploit changes in interest rates that might occur as a result of the Year 2000 rollover. The report, which took over 6 months to prepare, also serves as a blow by blow trouble-shooting guide for top executives in the wholesale securities industry. It is not aimed at the retail market or the army of small private investors known as ``day traders,'' Corrigan said.

Perhaps the greatest uncertainty facing big securities companies lies in the ability of financial institutions outside the G7 group of nations to handle the date change, he said. But he cited examples in which exchanges have hand-reconciled trades during calamities such as a 30-hour computer failure at the Bank of New York in 1985.

``If you reach the point where a market or an exchange has to be closed it's not the end of the world,'' he added.

Corrigan, a former chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, said he did not expect there to be ``any meaningful slowdown'' in business activity around the New Year. He did, however, say there would be a distribution change as companies schedule important trades away from the critical 10 days on either side of Dec. 31.

Corrigan said securities firms would be working to maintain liquidity in the last 10 days of December and the first 10 days of January, to give them flexibility in dealing with potential Y2K problems.

-- Sysman (y2kboard@yahoo.com), May 25, 1999.


So the SIA spent ten million managing the tests and the industry has spent five billion on remediation so far.

First I do not trust self-reporting. There have been too many lies. Then there is the matter of all the financial institutions that do business with the stock exchanges.

How many of these brokerage houses, banks, hedge funds, mutual funds, etc. etc. are there doing business with the exchanges? Think about it.

Now, how many of them are compliant? How many?

There is a great deal at stake here and there is only one message that the SIA dare deliver. Testing is not compliance. The only true test will come on rollover. Everything-all at once. Care to place your money on their word? Not me.

-- Mike Lang (webflier@erols.com), May 25, 1999.


The test results as reported are great news for the most advanced sector in the most advanced part of the world. Since I always maintain skepticism about self-reporting, but am not a geek, I would be interested to hear from any techie who thinks the reported error rate is within the reasonable range for a first run of large scale tests among multiple firms (as opposed to too-good to-be-true).

-- Bill Byars (billbyars@softwaresmith.com), May 25, 1999.

Let's asume that ti DID go as planned,and that the situation is fine, until they need to get into th econtingencies. Hand reconciling in 1985 sounds FANTASTIC, absent the fact that in 1985, the typical volume was well under 100 million shares. tody's volume, which is fairly normal for now, was 823 million shares. Whups! Then 30 hours for one bank's transactions. Now, 240 hours (errr 10 days to reconcile one day's trading. Can you say trading halt?).

This is NOT TO SAY that I do not believe that they are compliant. It would be nice to check at least ONE entity off the list this week.

Chuck

-- Chuck, a night driver (rienzoo@en.com), May 25, 1999.



I like others think the banking industry is in trouble. How much? We don't know.

But now that a few international banks have been downgraded to a sell Citicorp and others, this is a bad sign.

Will the Dow and NASDAQ slip more this week?

There certainly is the reasonable possibility that its not pretty.

Take into consideration if the telecomunications Industry has errors along with the local electric company for the NY Stock Exchange? To say nothing of the totaly computer based NASDAQ. How long can the Exchanges be closed and not have a damaging effect on the world and national economies?

If you are comfortable, you are naieve.

Father

-- Thomas G. Hale (hale.t@att.net), May 26, 1999.


What is this self reporting nonsense? Do you really think that 800 securities firms 'self reported' a huge lie? Don't you think that maybe one of the 10,000+ people involved might have leaked something if that were the case?

And I suppose it also won't matter to any of you conspiracy freaks that the Securities and Exchange Commission was looking over everyone's shoulder the whole way. Oh, yeah, they're in on it too.

What's it take for something to NOT be self reporting? You don't trust the companies and you don't trust the government regulators - so who's left? Audit firms are big money-hungry partnerships, so you can't trust them.

Maybe if Gary North could learn something about systems, then clone himself 10 million times, and then be in every data center, factory and power plant in the world while it did testing?

-- Polly (skippy@innermongolia.com), May 26, 1999.


Polly,

Don't think so. If you were not compliant by Dec 31, 1998, North says it is impossible for you to be compliant. He says you have to be completely compliant and have 1 full year to test, or you are NOT compliant. If you did not make it by 98, you won"t run in 00

-- walt (walt@lcs.k12.ne.us), May 26, 1999.


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