The New York Stock Exchange shuts down for nearly four hours because of a trading glitch, and the media goes into meltdown. Even President Barack Obama is briefed on the likely consequences, signalling that yesterday’s outage was a significant event.

Or was it? The truth is that stock trading was able to carry on regardless on a host of other platforms. The simple fact of life here is that stock exchanges do have technical issues, but the impact isn't quite what it used to be.