Breaking News!

I couldn't help thinking of Mo Ansari when I got on CNN.Money.com right before the market closed to see the most unique "Breaking News!" that I've witnessed in my career: "The market will remain open until 4:15PM!"

The market had been facing downward since the opening, brought on of course by the jobs report, which was exactly what Mo Ansari said to expect, but keeping the market open the day before an observed holiday for 15 minutes was too bizarre.  We found out that it was due to "connectivity" issues, as in the freakin' New York Stock Exchange had computer problems!!  This is a first in my career, and I am going to start searching the financial websites to find out if it had happened before.

I had the presence of mind to set up an exchange into the Total Stock Market fund for the remainder of the money that I had planned a while ago (see 6/15 entry), thinking it might be the closest to 8,000 we're going to see again, but the market had already passed 4PM (its regular close) and the website did not provide me a guaranteed trade date.  Why?  Because Vanguard hates day-traders, which is what I was doing.  If you want to make an exchange, make the exchange.  If you want the lowest possible price, then go somewhere else because they're not going to help you!  While it served me no good, I had to respect it.  It protects long-term investors (including me) as a whole.

Then, it turned out that we stayed late to change the trade date on every transaction submitted between 4 and 4:15PM (with a nice little OT for the next payday) so I guess I should have gone ahead and dumped the money into it during that 15-minute grace.  If nothing else, it would have made for a good story!  But we'll see what happens Monday.  If the unemployment reports scared the market down 2.5% today, then I don't know what is going to give investors the confidence to buy on Monday (or at least throughout the whole week).