They Stopped Updating the Dow?

After the closing bell the Dow average continued to drop over 100 points, THEN, they stopped updating it. Last update at 4:07.
[finance.yahoo.com...]
Does anyone know if this is normal?

[edit on 9-10-2008 by Leroy]

It closes at 4pm if I'm not mistaken. Should reopen tomorrow at it's normal time.

reply to post by Telafree


I guess what I'm asking is, if the stocks on the Dow continue to settle out after the bell, and they don't update the average, can it OPEN on a different lower number? Because it seems like they are trying to not freak people out. Usually the market continues to settle out for quite a while after the closing bell. More than 7 minutes.

reply to post by Leroy


Google shows it as 8579 or -678. finance.google.com...

You can watch the futures on Bloomberg once they start updating those.
www.bloomberg.com... They aren't reflecting after hours yet though.

reply to post by Karlhungis


Thanks for the info. This is crazy, even though we've been expecting it. Fox just posited that this might be "the end?" of Wall St? Anyway it was updating every minute, then it just stopped. So I'm wondering if things are continuing to settle down behind the scenes, but maybe that's not the way it works. This is far from my area of expertise.

[edit on 9-10-2008 by Leroy]

reply to post by Leroy


It's perfectly normal. At 4pm EST the closing bell is rung, so active trading stops.
However, there are usually a huuuuuuge number of trades that happen in the minutes or seconds before the closing bell, and those trades have to be factored in to the final tally.
On many days, especially days like today where there's a lot of trading going on, it takes a minute or ten for the computers to work their way through the last batches and for the numbers to be finalized.

That's why you saw the numbers continuing to change until about 4:11 today, then suddenly stop. The computers finished their calculations and the traders went home to drink themselves into a stupor.

The market opened at 8568, even though it closed at 8579. Only an 11 point difference granted, but this answers my question. It is possible for the Dow to stop updating their average, even though technically it would continue to drop, as the rush of last minute sell orders get processed.
This leads to disparate closing and opening numbers. Maybe, as Anachryon suggested, everyone just wanted to get the heck outta there and cry. However, this whole aspect of the market, "settling", has me suspicious, after watching it close down 520 the other day. Twenty minutes later it was down 778. Yesterday it just froze. Somebody said 'End this thing now!'.
Anyhow, this is about the least of our problems now. I feel the same way I felt the week of 911. Jervous and Nerky.