NEW YORK (AP) - As harrowing as the stock market's plunges have been in recent days, they still haven't been enough to trigger the "circuit breaker'' mechanisms that result in an automatic timeout in trading. The Big Board implemented the automatic halts after the stock market crashed in the late 1980s to force traders to take a break from frenzied selling. The Dow Jones industrial average would have to fall 1,100 points in a day to trigger the first halt. If that point is reached before 2 p.m., the market would shut down for an hour. If the threshold is breached between 2 p.m. and 2:30 p.m., the halt will last 30 minutes. No trading stops will take place if the plunge occurs after 2:30 p.m. Based on Thursday's Dow close of 8,579, the threshhold number to cause the market...
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