(Milli)seconds after today's market open, utilities NextEra Energy (NEE) and American Electric Power (AEP) did what most stocks in the New Normal do when there is an unexpected event (like a 4 sigma plunge in the Nikkei): they flash crashed.
What is different about AEP and NEE is that unlike most other daily stocks that implode in a matter of milliseconds, the collective market cap of the two companies was nearly $60 billion, which in turn sent the broader utilities index down over 10%. Of course, for a few milliseconds it was more like $30 billion: because that is how much in capitalization was lost in under one second, when today's flash crash du jour struck.
But fear not: anyone who got stopped out under $76.19 in NEE and under $46.03 in AEP are the "lucky" ones, and the trades were marked as "Aberrant." Alas since that simply means the trades are excluded from daily high and low charts, that is hardly comforting for anyone.
In other words, the "unlucky ones" are, well, everyone, because no trades were actually DKed. So to all those who lost electronic money due to what was an electronic trading algo gone wrong, can submit an electronic complaint to the NYSE, which will be promptly ignored by an electronic email filter. In other news, investor confidence in electronic markets has never been higher.
NEE
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AES
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Courtesy of Nanex [6] [6]