STORY:
Wall Street Tests for Y2K Bug

According to a Reuters story on the Fox Market Wire, preliminary results in a Wall Street test for signs of the "millennium bug" look promising. The Securities Industry Association (SIA), the trade group organizing the test, said results from the March 6th dry run were "better than expected," but the real test is yet to come.

More than 400 brokerages are checking their computer systems, aiming to ensure that the hive of computers that link up Wall Street will perform normally on Monday, Jan. 3, 2000.

On Saturday March 6, the computers were set to act as though it were Dec. 29, 1999. In the next test, on March 13, they will be set to Dec. 30. The test schedule, which runs for five more weekends, will simulate the year 2000 on April 10.

The article states that more than 170,000 mock trades went through Wall Street computer systems with a light volume of calls and routine problems coming into command center, staffed by SIA workers and "coaches" from the auditing firm PricewaterhouseCoopers

The test went beyond stocks, also checking systems for trading options, mutual funds, corporate bonds, municipal bonds, mortgage-backed securities, government securities and money market funds.

The securities industry as a whole is estimated to be spending up to $6 billion to ensure computer systems do not crash on New Year's Day.

Source: Reuters / FoxMarket Wire

DATE: 3/09/99

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