US Stocks Suspended Amidst Malicious Attack Fears; Google Faces Potential Breakup Troubles

Last night, the U.S. stock market experienced a sudden change, with dozens of stocks on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) suddenly halting trading at the opening.

Did the U.S. stock trading system encounter an attack incident?

Recently, many companies have successively released their fourth-quarter reports, with performance generally below market expectations. The interest rate risk faced by the U.S. stock market is gradually turning into performance risk.

Technology giant Google is also facing big trouble at this time, and may ultimately be judged as a monopoly and have to be split up.

01, Suspected attack

Last night, the European stock market performed relatively normally, with no particularly significant information affecting it, and the trends of individual stocks and the overall market were neither hot nor cold.

However, after the U.S. stock market opened, large banks such as Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo suddenly experienced a sharp plunge, followed by temporary suspensions of trading for multiple stocks on the New York Stock Exchange.

In addition to some bank stocks, stocks such as AT&T, Nike, and McDonald's were also affected, totaling more than 250.

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However, not long after, all stocks resumed normal trading. Previously, Wells Fargo and Morgan Stanley's declines exceeded 8%, but they also experienced a rapid rebound after resuming trading.

Although the specific reasons still need to be investigated by relevant parties in the United States, the media currently generally predicts that this was caused by a technical failure. However, this is a situation that has never occurred in recent decades, so it is also not ruled out that the trading system was attacked.However, experts immediately pointed out that this possibility is not high, as the U.S. stock trading system is the fastest and most secure trading system in the world, and the likelihood of being attacked by hackers is not great.

A more likely scenario is that high-frequency trading by institutions happened to resonate in certain aspects, causing the system to crash.

If this is indeed the case, it indicates that in the future, during the release of financial reports, market sentiment may also resonate, leading to unexpected significant increases or decreases.

02, U.S. stock market closes

After the thrilling moment at the beginning of the opening, the overall trend of the U.S. stock market seems relatively flat. As of the closing this morning, the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose slightly by 0.3%.

The other two major indices fell slightly, but the decline was very small, with the S&P 500 down by less than 0.1%.

A group of large technology stocks fluctuated, but in terms of magnitude, the increase was relatively small, while the decrease was larger.

Apple's increase reached 1%, Tesla rose by only 0.1%, but Microsoft fell by 0.2%, Amazon fell by 1.2%, and Google fell by 2%.

Chip stocks experienced a collective decline, with the semiconductor index down by 0.7%. The largest decline was likely Texas Instruments, down by 6%, in addition to AMD down by 2%, and Intel down by 1%.

Chinese concept stocks also saw a general decline, with the China Golden Dragon Index down by 0.37%.New energy vehicle companies NIO, XPeng, and Li Auto are all experiencing declines. Li Auto's drop is 0.9%, while NIO and XPeng's downturns have reached 3% to 4%.

03, Google's Big Trouble

Google is currently facing a significant issue.

The U.S. Department of Justice and eight states have jointly accused Google of using its dominant position in the advertising market to engage in illegal monopolistic practices.

According to U.S. antitrust laws, if a company is found guilty of monopolistic behavior, it could face substantial penalties, and the company might even be forced to split up.

A famous example from the last century was the forced breakup of Bell Labs in the 1980s.

However, in the following 40 years, there have been fewer cases of large enterprises being split up.

It is believed that this lawsuit will consume a considerable amount of time and financial resources for both parties, and it is very likely to end with Google's compromise.

But regardless, for Google, this is not an easy situation to navigate.

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