Almost(?) a real life epic market typo.

So the rumors were that someone at Citi miskeyed "billions" instead of "millions" which caused the panic selloff yesterday in the US stock market. I was having flashbacks of trying to sell a Pangean for 1.5B instead of 1.5M and eating a hefty market fee. Guess it wasn't the case (or just damage control by Citi).

Deny, deny, deny.

Yep, this was my first thought when I saw that story in the news yesterday!

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville City of Heroes didn't fail, City of Heroes was killed. If a 747 dropped on your house, you'd say you were killed, not you failed to find a safer dwelling.

Guess Citi switched to the same borked UI that we did...

"Fat finger" trades happen all the time in the real world, they just rarely happen when the base number was of that high magnitude. The trade is rumored to be a sell order of 10mm+ shares of a S&P 500 stock which would have valued the sale at over $500mm. A $500bn sale would trigger "end of the world" scenarios from all computer trading systems, so we're lucky we got off easy!

As a real stock broker.....I'm doubting the M vs B thing....but I can easily imagine that someone intended to sell $10M of the ETF in question and accidently sold 10M shares since under the three platforms I've traded with you select shares or dollars and it'd be easy to mess up and do the wrong one.

My #1 tip of the moment is that although bonds are more predictable, that doesn't mean they're safer. Since interest rates will go up at some point in the moderately near future (either the economy will grow or rates will rise because risk of lending will rise if the economy doesn't grow) dont buy bonds with longer maturities than maybe 6-9 mos.

If you want a stock tip I'd say don't buy GS because theres too much risk there.

Ammo, THE currency of the 21st century.