Wall Street testing?

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I heard that Wall Street is doing their Year 2000 testing today. Does anyone have any further info on that? Like for example, are they testing to see if they have a problem or are they testing their newly Year 2k compliant software? Either way, should be interesting!

-- Amy Leone (aleone@amp.com), July 13, 1998

Answers

I read in the Charlotte Observer this weekend that the SEC is testing the ability of traders to use their systems over the next two weeks. The results of this test are to be posted on WWW.SIA.COM

-- Dennis Good (dgood@carolina.net), July 13, 1998.

The testing going on now is more or less a "dress rehersal". The main firms are testing trades made on 29DEC1999 which need to clear in 3 days, taking the closing of the trade in to 1JAN2000. It will test only part of the system and only the major houses are invovled (representing about 50% of the normal trade volume). This is not the same as actually testing the whole system's operations in 2000, but it may begin to show some of the weak points of their inter-operabilty fixes - at least for these major firms. It wIl be fun to hear the initial results.

-- steve (stiker1@aol.com), July 13, 1998.

Do you think we will be told the truth about the results? I bet they will say they are still gathering the data and it will take several weeks to analyze the data and then we won't hear anymore about it.

-- Barb-Douglas (bardou@yahoo.com), July 13, 1998.

There's about 25 or so firms doing joint testing starting today. These are firms which are big enough to be able to set up an entire off-line system for use in coordinated testing. They will be testing some of their modified software to see if the whole system will work properly. I assume that each of the firms involved in the testing have tested their changes in-house to the extent possible.

The test consists of setting the date to 12/29/1999 and then performing dummy trades using some bogus securities which have been set up specifically for test purposes. Since these trades would settle after 1/1/2000, this test will exercise the portion of the system which deals with settlement dates.

Further tests will be conducted later in the week - after the test system dates roll over to the year 2000.

This is not a very comprehensive test, but it is a start. The SIA has a lot more testing planned for the next year or so. I think the purpose of this one is mainly to get the ball rolling and to shake the bugs out of the test process itself. It can't be easy coordinating tests with 25 independant corporations who normally compete with each other. It's probably a lot like trying to herd 25 cats.

I'm ambivalent about how I'd like to see the tests play out. On the one hand, I'd like to see them be a big success. Unlike many industries (and governments), the securities industry has been working very hard on Y2k remediation - they deserve some success and I'd like to see some good news for a change.

On the other hand, if the news is good that'll just encourage the idiots who think everything will fixed in time. A spectacular failure might just wake them up.

I might be wrong about this, but I think that the banks are planning on starting similar testing aroung the end of this month. Anyone know for sure?

-- Ed Perrault (EdPerrault@Compuserve.com), July 13, 1998.


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