'Flash Crash' Was Machines Run Amok: Poll

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Mystery has been a primary character in some of the biggest recent news headlines. Whether the mystery is the primary cause of the BP(BP) oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, or the "flash crash" of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, there's been no shortage of theories to explain the events, just a dearth of concrete proof to wrap up these investigations.

In the case of the Dow's "flash crash," the press has been busy assigning blame in the past week, after the NYSE Euronext(NYX) and Nasdaq OMX Group(NDAQ) tired of pointing the finger at each other.

By Monday, May 10, the head honchos of the NYSE and Nasdaq -- as well as the heads of several electronic exchanges -- met with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The exchange fracas ended as all parties began work on a new set of rules to avoid any future market plunges, the likes of which caught the trading community with its pants down on Thursday, May 6, when the Dow fell by nearly 1,000 points.

Neither the SEC nor the exchanges had much to say after the Monday meeting ended -- the only words were a terse statement from the SEC on the progress that all parties were making toward a new set of trading rules. A CNBC report on Thursday, meanwhile, indicated that the SEC may propose new rules for single-stock circuit breakers and a global-equities circuit breaker by early next week. Yet there was no explanation by the end of the week from any of the exchanges or regulators as to just what went wrong in the first place.

On Wednesday, the Wall Street Journal took a crack at the case, donning the financial equivalent of Sherlock Holmes' pipe and cap and reporting that elementary deduction led to the conclusion that a quant hedge fund, Universa Investments, may have been responsible for the trade that sank the markets.

Nevertheless, the case continued on with other press private investigators joining the hunt before the week ended.

On Friday, Reuters reported that it had cracked the case, and that Overland Park, Kansas-based money manager Waddell & Reed (WDR)had executed a series of S&P 500 futures contracts trades on "Fat Finger Thursday" that were the cause of the "flash crash."