All you can see on CNBC and twitter right now are investors in shock after the Nasdaq announced it was halting trading after an “unexplained technical issue.” As the 2nd largest U.S. Stock exchange, this is alarming for many, but we can’t help but point out that once again, futures markets once again prove port in a storm.
The chart below shows the Nasdaq composite versus the Nasdaq futures over the past few hours, and you can clearly see the index flat lining while the futures have kept trading, allowing traders and investors to hedge or place their bets. The CME’s slogan, “where the world comes to manage risk” has changed to “where the world comes to trade the Nasdaq” for the past two hours.
Source: TradeStation
Disclaimer: (Past Performance is not necessarily indicative to futures results.)
PS – It wasn’t that long ago when futures markets were at first blamed, and then shown to have held up remarkably well during the flash crash. Here was CME’s Terry Duffy in May talking about the flash crash and how the futures markets performed.