GAO Urges Market’s Overhaul

A congressional agency’s report on last October’s stock market crash concluded today that computerized trading equipment and the way transactions are regulated should be overhauled to avoid another such plunge.

The General Accounting Office’s study said that the nation’s various financial markets increasingly have come to affect one another, meaning trading officials must find ways to prevent plummeting prices in one exchange from spilling into others. But the GAO, an investigating agency for Congress, said government regulators also must keep up with the times as trading volumes grow and links become stronger among securities and future markets, at home and overseas.