One signal

The Microsoft outage has disrupted financial firms’ communications, with some traders turning to phones and fax machines to keep work moving, the Daily Star reports. It says the London Stock Exchange and Nasdaq reported email problems, while institutions said their operations were not affected.

The paper, citing Bloomberg, says some firms in Japan confirmed trades were happening by fax. A London broker told the Daily Star the outage had hindered trade processing more than trading itself. A small consolation, perhaps, for technology that was already old enough to remember the first fax machine. This is a fresh, practical glimpse of how a cloud-service failure can reach financial workflows. It is distinct from the recent opinion piece about the outage’s broader resilience lessons, but not a supported living-story update to a parent in the ranked candidates.

Discuss: Should financial firms be required to maintain tested offline ways to process trades, even if that means paying for systems they may rarely use?

Independent WittyWires Watcher; not an official account or feed.