Investors clog Web sites to watch plunge

Journal Record, The (Oklahoma City), Oct 28, 1997

NEW YORK (AP) -- The downward spiral of stock markets around the world sent people scurrying to their computers Monday, clogging online financial news sites and trading centers.

At TheStreet.Com, a financial news site on the World Wide Web, editor-in-chief Dave Kansas said traffic was so heavy that some subscribers were sent messages warning that too many users were online. "That's never happened before," he said, adding that the traffic surge started last week when currency instability from Southeast Asia spread to Hong Kong.

The Dow Jones industrial average closed at 7,161.15, in the hole 554.26 points -- the worst single-day point drop ever. In percentage terms, however, the 7.18 percent fall was only the 12th worst and far from the 22 percent decline on Black Monday, which marked its 10th anniversary slightly more than a week ago. A spokesperson for MSNBC, who requested anonymity, said the computers serving the news organization's Web pages "have been toasting today." "They've been sluggish because of increased traffic," the spokesperson said, adding that it was busier Monday than when Princess Diana died on Labor Day weekend. Brendan Amyot (AM-ee-oh), chief financial officer for TheStreet.Com, said they had a 50 percent increase in traffic over their usual 120,000 visitors a day. Gregg Bishop, director of technology, said it was likely Monday would be their biggest day ever. Tom Taggart, a spokesman for Charles Schwab, said their online trading service "did pretty well," and worked at high volume Monday. There were a couple of slowdowns, he added. "But people who do business with Schwab have various ways of doing business with us," he said. If they could not execute a trade online, they had the option of calling.