Think you’ve got idiot peers at work? Well the award for this year has to go to this guy who’s trader typo sold 610,000 shares valued at $3.1 billion dollars at 1 yen (about a $1) each, resulting in a $244 million dollars. While technically it IS his fault, one really has to wonder WTF system designer let someone arbitrarily have THAT much control over a stock price. That’s scary that the trade desk software, especially in the billions of dollars would 1. allow a price that deviates from the standard deviation of the current price, and 2. allows the sale of such a huge block of trades without safegards. Most trade desks would sell such a block in smaller chunks to avoid tanking the price. The other theory could be that the system is so severely outdated that you can punch in anything. I’m guessing a 1/4 billion dollar loss will fix that issue. Press more for my cache of the article.
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