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A top Democrat announced Friday he plans to hold a hearing Sept. 20 on computerized trading and its impact on market stability, in the wake of recent high-profile market incidents. The hearing, which will be held by Senate Banking securities subcommittee chairman Jack Reed, Democrat of Rhode Island, will seek to look at whether regulators have the tools they need to identify and limit “manipulative or abusive strategies.” The announcement comes after NYSE Euronext agreed to pay a $ 5 million penalty to settle allegations by the Securities and Exchange Commission that technology issues at the NYSE gave certain customers an an unfair advantage on trading information.

Southwest Airlines said Sunday it has begun filing refunds to customers who were accidentally billed multiple times for a single flight, after a half-price online ticket promotion backfired. The special sale designed to celebrate Southwest’s reaching the three million mark in Facebook fans was supposed to give customers who booked flights on Friday a 50 percent discount on certain fares. Instead, hundreds of frustrated would-be fliers wound up posting stories on Facebook about how their credit and debit cards were being repeatedly charged, in some cases 20 or more times for a single flight. They also tweeted and blogged about [...]