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Huge Scare on Wall St. Thursday; At One Point P&G, a Big TV Advertiser and Usually a Stable Stock, Plunged 37%. Was the Trigger for Yesterday’s Wall St. Madness Caused by a Trader’s Typo?

May 7, 2010  •  Post A Comment

The panic on Wall Street on Thursday, May 6, may have been caused by a trader who, mistakenly, punched into a computer that he wanted to sell $16 billion worth of futures, when he meant to type in $16 million, the Associated Press is reporting.

Says the report, "A computerized selloff possibly caused by a simple typographical error triggered one of the most turbulent days in Wall Street history Thursday and sent the Dow Jones industrials to a loss of almost 1,000 points, nearly a tenth of their value, in less than half an hour. It was the biggest drop ever during a trading day.

"The Dow recovered two-thirds of the loss before the closing bell, but that was still the biggest point loss since February of last year. The lightning-fast plummet temporarily knocked normally stable stocks such as Procter & Gamble to a tiny fraction of their former value and sent chills down investors’ spines."

Stocks of most big media companies ended the day down around 4% to 6%, MediaPost reported. 

4 Comments

  1. Or maybe not a typo. Comforting to know that selfish greedy brokers who make their money in this system now know of another way to game it, eh?

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  4. That is bloody ordinary isn’t it?

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