Apparently, a typo caused world stock exchanges to crash. In the space of 20 minutes, America’s top 30 firms lost billions in market value – more than they did after September 11. The pen (or PC) truly is mightier than the sword.
I find this scary, and quite frankly, unacceptable. Financial firms spend millions on virus security and firewalls, protecting against hackers and cyber terrorists.
How simple and cheap would it be to have a data validation assess each trade entry? You punch in 15 billion instead of 15 million and the system retorts “Warning : Your entered trade is 1,000 times greater than the maximum trade of this stock over the last five years. Please re-enter the amount to continue.” The warning and override should then be recorded in a log.
Please will the powers-that-be sort this out before it happens again by “accident” and someone makes a fortune out of the market reaction.
