Thursday, May 6, 2010

"Whoops" Doesn't Cut It

DISCLAIMER: The following post may contain stuff about finance and the like.

So, today, the Dow Jones had the biggest drop in its entire history. In half an hour. Over 1000 (not 9000) points lost, 1010 to be exact, or 1010.14 to be even more exact.
There are several reasons for this, but the most major factor was a typo.

Yeah. A typo sent the market crashing. What. The. Hell. I'll get to that later though.
There were three factors which contributed to this historic event, in all.
First, the riots in Greece, and the general fail of Greece. The bankruptcy of the country had the stock market dropping for the past week already. Today would be the same...

Second, an inexplicable drop in Procter & Gamble share prices, from $61.56, to $39.37, though it lasted but a short while, caused automated systems to buy and sell the stock, and generally cause havoc. The bad sort...

The third, and in my opinion, most influential? A fat finger. Someone pressed a 'b' instead of an 'm'. And traded sixteen billion shares of some stock, rather than sixteen million. Whoops.
No, I'm sorry, that's not quite enough. You just sent the Dow Jones back a month. Good job there.

Well, what's done is done. What can we do to make sure this never happens again?
Don't let stock brokers eat any food. That'll make them skinny.

...

What? It's not called 'fat fingers' for nothing! It's not called the 'I can see my ribs without trying syndrome'....unless I've been horribly uninformed about changes in English, and now, fat means skinny, and fingers mean ribs. Or something.

Those are damn fat fingers. Either that, or horrid hand-eye coordination.
Regardless, we must put all stockbrokers on a strict diet so that they can press the 'm' key without any fear of hitting the 'b' key instead. And by strict diet, of course, I mean give them no food. Maybe sell them carrots for $100 each. They certainly have the money. (They're investing in food stocks!)

Of course, a lack of food might cause their fingers to shake uncontrollably. And make them hit 'b' instead of 'm'.

Back to the drawing board.

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