The "personal" sanctions against Putin's oligarch cronies are not the equity traders' problem.
Under normal conditions, if an exchange has problems, traders can direct their orders to other public exchanges.
In one instance a trader would regularly shout out to colleagues that he was trying to manipulate the rate to a particular level, to check whether they had any conflicting requests.The FSA has identified price-rigging dating back to 2005, yet some current and former traders say that problems go back much further than that.
As with the stockmarket wobbles caused by Dubai's debt problems, traders may have decided this was the right moment to close their books for the holidays.After all, one of the main motors of the rally has been near-zero interest rates in the rich economies.
"The pop, if any, that Facebook may provide, may be a temporary distraction for traders, but material problems will likely take precedence," Rob Kurzatkowski, an analyst at OptionsExpress, wrote on Thursday.
Throughout these processes, traders faced the problem of keeping the ice from melting; melted ice represented waste and lost profits.
Just last month, however, some outside traders indicated they experienced problems when routing trades through Knight Capital.
Some traders say Enron's problems started with comments on Tuesday by Laurence H. Meyer, a governor of the Federal Reserve.
The stock exchanges in Tokyo and Hong Kong said they were working without problems, and traders found ways to complete their transactions.
Gene McGillian, a broker and analyst at Tradition Energy, said the results of the Greek elections did little to eradicate the fears over the euro zone debt problems, and traders have refocused on uncertain economic conditions.
