Many people caught in last week's black discovered to their chagrin that the latest innovation did not necessarily work best when the power went down. The examples of this lesson was shown in the lines of people waiting to use street corner pay phones after their cell phones failed to connect and the popularity of the handful of gas stations that had not upgraded to electronic pumps. Closer to home for the fund industry ETFs proved the point.

While ETFs are the latest innovation of the fund industry, they were also the only fund product to be affected by the blackout. While both the NYSE and the Nasdaq opened as usual on Friday morning, problems with a backup generator meant that the Amex floor could not be adequetely cooled causing the exchnage to delay its opening.

That delay meant that trading in roughly 75 percent of the industry's ETF products could not open. The Amex is the where the bulk of those funds are listed.

Hardest hit was industry giant Barclays Global Investors. The firm, which lists 78 ETFs on the Amex, said that it saw only one quarter of normal trading on Friday. Forty eight of the ETFs opened on alternative exchanges, including ECNs. Another 30 funds had no volume because of the Amex glitch.  

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