A senior senator on Monday urged major U.S. stock exchanges to adopt uniform rules for slowing large sell-offs, and financial regulators to get moving on a new market surveillance system.
"Coordination and consistent safeguards between trading venues -- and across markets -- is essential," Democrat Charles Schumer said in a letter to exchange chiefs and regulators that was released by his office in the wake of last week's sudden plunge in the stock markets.
"The need is crystal clear for the establishment of a centralized consolidated system of monitoring for risk and market abuse that includes all trading activity and looks across all markets, including futures exchanges," he said.
"This would reduce the likelihood of repeating events like we experienced last Thursday, and will also make it easier to investigate any such incidents to determine the cause."