When a typo goes bad

[Cowperson]

So, you make a mistake typing in a $5,000 trade on a stock exchange and it ends up costing $225 million.

Do you get fired for that?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10394551/

Cowperson

[Reaper]

Originally Posted by Cowperson

So, you make a mistake typing in a $5,000 trade on a stock exchange and it ends up costing $225 million.

Do you get fired for that?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10394551/

Cowperson

I'm thinking that this is one of those instances where the guy who made the typo ends up standing on the sidewalk in front of the company while wearing a sign denoting his failures and the shame brought to his family.

[Resolute 14]

I think my favorite story along this lines comes from a French broker who was accidentally leaning on his "instant sell" button on his keyboard and sold $1.3 billion worth of French government bond contracts in 1998.

[Bertuzzied]

Well when i worked at TD Waterhouse they would promote you.

This new guy on the job for only 1month makes a $85000us trading error when he bought instead of sold a stock. Wow not even a warning. The following month he gets a position as a trainer! hahaha. No wonder they closed the calgary office.

[Neeper]

What if that stock made money? Would they have claimed it as an error?

[I-Hate-Hulse]

I envision this: Anyone remember that movie "Gung Ho" starring Micheal Keaton when the Japanese take over the local car factory? There's a scene right at the beginning when some poor bawling Japanese lackey with ribbons tacked all over him is being chewed out and being berated for screwing up:

Micheal Keaton: "Hey, those are nice ribbons!"
Japanese Boss (enraged, with accent): "Dohes are rhiiiiiibons of shame!!!!!"


Local companies are on the typo wall of shame too. Spreadsheet errors are one on the riskiest errors around. TransAlta royally screwed up a couple years back in it's Energy Trading operations:

June 03, 2003 TORONTO (Reuters) - TransAlta Corp. said on Tuesday it will take a $24 million charge to earnings after a bidding snafu landed it more U.S. power transmission hedging contracts than it bargained for, at higher prices than it wanted to pay.
[...] the company's computer spreadsheet contained mismatched bids for the contracts, it said. "It was literally a cut-and-paste error in an Excel spreadsheet that we did not detect when we did our final sorting and ranking bids prior to submission," TransAlta chief executive Steve Snyder said in a conference call. "I am clearly disappointed over this event. The important thing is to learn from it, which we've done."
As New York ISO rules did not allow for a reversal of the bids, the contracts went ahead.


http://www.globeinvestor.com/servlet...-TRANSALTA-COL



That wiped out an entire quarter's profit for TransAlta. I believe that particular office that did that was shut down pronto quick.

[KipperIsGod]

What if that stock made money? Would they have claimed it as an error?

I would think no, it wouldnt.