New York Stock Exchange Circuit Breakers

Given a decline of nearly seven hundred points at the open, it's a good idea to review the circuit breaker rules on the New York Stock Exchange. While we often hear that it takes a 10% decline for the first round of breakers to kick in, the numbers are actually set at the beginning of each quarter. At the start of this quarter, the Dow was at 11,000, setting the threshold for the first circuit breaker at 1,100 points. However, based on yesterday's close of 8,579, the Dow would need to fall 13% in order for the first round of circuit breakers to kick in. For the second round of circuit breakers to kick in, we would have to have a decline of 26%.