Fat Finger Syndrome

The Guardian reports an interesting story today on how fragile the world financial markets are. One typo led to a 300 point drop in the Nikkei index!

Regulators today announced an investigation into how a trader in Japan made an erroneous transaction that caused chaos in stock markets across Asia.

The financial services watchdog in Tokyo is investigating the damage caused by a typing error that led Mizuho Securities - one of Japan's biggest brokerage firms - to lose at least 27bn yen (£128m).

The mistake also prompted a fall of 300 points on the benchmark Nikkei index.

The costly instance of so-called fat finger syndrome occurred yesterday morning when a trader at Mizuho Securities tried to sell 610,000 shares in a recruitment agency called J-Com, at one yen each, despite the fact the company had only 14,000 shares in issue.

Apparently, he had intended to sell one share for 610,000 yen. Not a good move.