Wall Street brokerages and exchanges have not yet encountered any significant glitches in their two-week test to find the "millennium bug" in their stock-trading computers, the Securities Industry Association said Wednesday.
"So far it's going well. We haven't found anything," said SIA spokeswoman Margaret Draper.
The two week test began Monday. Twenty-nine securities firms and 12 exchanges are simulating trading of stocks and bonds between the last business week of 1999 and the first week of 2000. They're looking for millennium bugs, the inability of computers to handle dates correctly past the Year 2000.
If the glitches aren't found and fixed, they could throw stock markets all over the world into chaos. Computers with the flaw could cause unpredictable problems ranging from producing inaccurate data to making faulty calculations to crashing networks completely.
While Draper said they found some glitches dealing with computer connectivity problems, she said they were technical problems with the test itself.
The SIA, the sponsor of the test, is monitoring the trial runs closely. Financial industries around the world also are watching to determine whether they should pursue the same prototype.
The SIA expects to release a short statement at the end of each week with a final report on 10 August. If results show that the test needs to be revised, participants may schedule a second round in the fall after the firms have fixed the problems. A final larger-scale test is scheduled for spring 1999.
