Just when major European stock markets were in a mess, the New York Stock Exchange, the world's largest and most influential stock market, finally opened under the watchful eyes of global investors.

Although many people already knew that the stock market crash was inevitable at this time, they still held on to a sense of luck, hoping that the U.S. stock market could turn the tide and support the plummeting global stock markets.

But the facts make many people despair. Even the New York Stock Exchange, the largest stock market in the world, was not immune from the stock market crash that swept the world.

On October 19, at 9:30 a.m. Eastern Time on Monday, the New York Stock Exchange opened as usual. However, as soon as the market opened, all investors who were paying attention to U.S. stocks discovered in despair that U.S. stocks had opened nearly 100 points lower.

The U.S. stock market that opened lower did not show any signs of recovery in the following period. Instead, it continued to drop 67 points in just a few tens of seconds after the opening. At this time, the situation of the U.S. stock market can only be described as a free fall.

"Crash!" and "Stock market crash!" These two words that almost all investors are reluctant to mention suddenly became the mainstream words in the New York Stock Exchange. Countless investors and traders blushed and wanted to sell their stocks.

In this situation, except for the shareholders of large companies, no ordinary investor is willing to keep the stocks in their hands. The most urgent thing to do now is to try every possible means to sell the stocks in their hands and minimize the losses.

The huge amount of sell orders instantly overwhelmed the New York Stock Exchange's trading system. Even though the New York Stock Exchange had more than 200 of the most advanced microcomputers, it was still too late to handle such a huge amount of sell orders.

The performance of today's microcomputers is far inferior to that of computers thirty years from now that will have N-core PUs and N GB of memory. The combined processing speed of today's more than 200 microcomputers is not as fast as that of a single computer thirty years from now.

Under the huge number of sell transaction applications, the bulky old computer became slower than an old ox pulling a cart. It was a miracle that it did not crash.

But even if the New York Stock Exchange used the most advanced microcomputers, it could not save the market from plummeting as there were only sell orders but no buy orders. Especially as more and more sell orders appeared, the New York Stock Exchange's trading system was the first to collapse.

Less than an hour after the market opened, the computer was 20 minutes slower than the actual trading speed due to the large number of sell orders. At noon, the designated instruction conversion system (DOT) in the computer system was slow by about 75 minutes. Due to insufficient capacity of the DOT system, 120 million of the 1.96 billion shares of transactions sent to the DOT system were not executed.

The weak trading system has undoubtedly made today's U.S. stock market even worse.

Then, this panic and the weak system led to more selling.

And at this moment, in the United States, which is always good at producing idiots in critical moments, another strange idiot appeared.

This idiot is David Luther, chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

I don't know if this idiot is really stupid or has water in his brain, or his brain is caught in the door panel. Anyway, at such a sensitive moment, when the U.S. stock market is plummeting and investors urgently need to build confidence to resist the stock market crash, the head of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission actually gave a brainless speech in Washington at 1:09 pm.

"At a critical moment, although we don't know when that critical moment will be, I will discuss with the stock exchange the possibility of temporarily closing the exchange."

Just this one sentence made the already plummeting U.S. stock market feel like it had suffered a magnitude 12 earthquake.

Is a stock market crash scary? It is definitely scary! But it is not the scariest thing. The scariest thing is that investors lose confidence.

Everyone knows that a stock market crash is just a collective panic among investors for various reasons, which then leads to a short-term market crash. But as long as investors still have confidence in the stock market, it is not very difficult to survive a stock market crash. But once investors completely lose confidence, the resulting situation will be disastrous.

Why do investors have confidence in the stock market? It comes from many aspects. The first is that investors have confidence in the country where the stock market is located!

This is also why in this era, most of the countries that have opened stock markets are countries with strong economic capabilities. If you ask Somalia to open a stock market, or Zimbabwe to open a stock market, who the hell would go to invest in such a country!

This is a question of investor confidence.

The fundamental reason why the U.S. stock market is the most powerful stock market in the world is the strength of the U.S. economy and power. Countless investors have confidence in the United States.

But now, as the head of the U.S. securities exchange, David Luther is actually considering closing the stock market at such a sensitive time. This is definitely a disastrous statement.

Your government has no confidence in itself, so why do you ask us investors to have confidence?

In the stock market, closing a stock exchange and halting trading is something even more terrifying than a stock market crash.

In a little over ten hours, the Hong Kong Stock Exchange will be closed for the first time ever, and it will be closed for four days. On the surface, it seems that closing the market can avoid this stock market crash, but in fact, this is the most wrong approach. The stock market is a very pure place. Investing in such a place cannot rely on administrative orders, but on economic laws.

The stock market crash happened here, and investors need to sell their stocks to reduce losses. But you officials just suspend the market. How can this be tolerated? Won't the investors who can't sell their stocks be furious during the suspension?

My dear, there is more to this chapter. Please click on the next page to continue reading. It’s even more exciting later!