Stocks, Stock Trading | featured news

A federal judge Thursday temporarily blocked the government from enforcing a new insider trading law that would require about 28,000 executive branch employees to disclose details of their financial transactions on the Internet.

The New York Stock Exchange said it will pay $5 million to resolve U.S. regulatory charges that it gave certain customers “an improper head start” on trading information.

U.S. regulators should stem the growing tide of anonymous stock-trading and consider charging high-frequency traders fees for the disproportionate amount of orders they send into the marketplace, said a panel of experts advising how to avoid another "flash crash."

NYSE recommended that regulators seek out a broad-based stock index like the S&P 500 to underlie a new circuit breaker that would halt all U.S. stock trading if conditions become too volatile.

Germany's market regulator is poised to ban some forms of short-selling at 10 important financial institutions.

The SEC and the major trading exchanges agreed that a market-wide "circuit-breaker" system should be established to handle the type of market volatility demonstrated in Thursday's unsettling market plunge.