For those not paying attention this afternoon, consider yourself lucky. The markets were not fun to watch, with the worst loss since the post 9/11 restart.
One interesting element of the selloff was an instantaneous 200 point drop in the Dow at 3pm, a result of trading blocks being removed and queued-up sell orders taking effect. Since the market recovered a little from that point, and it looks as though global markets are keeping losses to a (relative) minimum, we should be able to "look back on this and laugh"... but it's kinda interesting to think about how such an "equipment glitch" could have stimulated the kind of panic that we saw 80 years ago. (Maybe not too much a stretch since China's margin situation is similar to what we had back then?)
</nerd> sorry, i just thought it was worth mentioning.