It's an SEC rule that is there to protect a company in case of a sudden increase/decrease in stock price due to excessive market pressures/volume. Basically if the price of a stock increases or decreases more than 10 percent within any 5 minute period trading of that stock is suspended for a brief time to allow things to cool down. The problem is that AMR is the weakest airline stock in the travel sector therefore it's the target of traders who are trying to short it.


If you're not familiar with shorting it's when a trader borrows stock from a broker and sells it on the market betting the price will fall. When it does the trader repurchases the stock at a lower price and returns the shares to their broker keeping the profit (difference in selling and purchase price). Yes! You can even make money in the market when the market goes down if your on the right side of the trade.