NUE…yet another errant circuit breaker pops

100 shares of NUE traded at $0.01 today at 11:52am.  The trade happened on the very light  volume CBOE Stock Exchange.  This 100 share trade was  obviously an error but it caused a halt of 5 minutes in a stock that has so far traded 5mm shares today.  These errant circuit breaker pops are getting way too common and we have already lost track of how many have been popped since the SEC unveiled the pilot program.  But we can expect even more now since the SEC expanded the pilot program to 1000 securities last week.

 In a comment letter to the SEC (http://www.sec.gov/comments/sr-nyse-2010-49/nyse201049-2.pdf), we urged the SEC to consider more factors than just one trade before halting a stock.  Before halting a stock,  we had two recommendations:  1)  minimum number of trades at the threshold level must occur 2) the National Best Bid/Offer should be checked to see if the current inside quote is consistent with the trade(s) that caused the trading pause.