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Comment by conistonwater | Hacker News Reader

That page lists the reasons as T1 (halt pending release of material news), and T2 (halt while news is being disseminated). So then it's not a circuit breaker (T5?)?

I wonder how exactly that works. What kind of news does it apply to? Is it common? Can a company ask for a trading halt on its own before it releases bad results?

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My understanding was that the markets have a duty to provide equal access to information that would determine your decisions.

This is one of the reasons why companies often release their quarterly results after market close. It allows all relevant parties to be able to access the latest information before selling resumes.

If this wasn't the case, then users with the fastest connections would be able to process, and react to the data before others in the market had a chance to do so as well.

Wait, isn't that the entire point of high-frequency trading and their low-latency access to markets?

Sure - market-makers need to react quickly. But that's only during the hours when the market is open. If there's no market, no-one needs to be quick about it.

1) HFT is more than just US equities. Many exchanges are open 23 hours a day.

2) Many HFT firms do not specialize in 'news-reading'. That is, they will sit out periods when an expected announcement is coming. You can observe this by looking at the liquidity of a product just prior to an expected relevant news release - there will be very few orders.

3) There are more events than just news events that require speed.

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