41–50 of 98 posts
This story isn't emphasizing an important point: the stock price of many tech companies - amazon, google, Microsoft - were pegged to exactly $123.46 for multiple hours. This is likely 123.456 rounded to 2 decimals. To me this smells like a software testing bug or hack, rather than "stocks crashing"
One nice thing about SEC-regulated markets - unlike the various cryptocurrency markets - is that it's possible for trades to be rolled back if they are "clearly erroneous". That isn't perfect - if the data is only a little off, it might not be possible to get a trade rolled back - but it tends to limit how much havoc is called. https://www.sec.gov/news/press/2009/2009-215.htm (My understanding is that trades can also…
This story isn't emphasizing an important point: the stock price of many tech companies - amazon, google, Microsoft - were pegged to exactly $123.46 for multiple hours. This is likely 123.456 rounded to 2 decimals. To me this smells like a software testing bug or hack, rather than "stocks crashing"
I saw it pegged at 123.47
And we trust that software can drive our cars for us?
I'd also hazard a guess that having humans update tens of thousands of stock prices every few seconds would result in more than one mistake in a decade.
Sometimes I wonder if it would make sense to place long-term buy orders at a ridiculously low bids. Just in case.
One nice thing about SEC-regulated markets - unlike the various cryptocurrency markets - is that it's possible for trades to be rolled back if they are "clearly erroneous". That isn't perfect - if the data is only a little off, it might not be possible to get a trade rolled back - but it tends to limit how much havoc is called. https://www.sec.gov/news/press/2009/2009-215.htm (My understanding is that trades can also…
Sometimes I wonder if it would make sense to place long-term buy orders at a ridiculously low bids. Just in case.
Isn't that sort of what happened in the "flash crash"? Or was it purely market-makers and algorithms working their way down to 0? Big regulated markets now have circuit breakers to prevent this, unfortunately.
Ie, you say "I would like to buy 1 million microsoft stock, at the price of 1 cent".
The flash crash was cause by stop-loss orders. IE, if the price gets low, then sell. Instead of price gets low, then buy.
And we trust that software can drive our cars for us?
You press the gas pedal, and a computer reads that signal and puts gas into the engine.
One nice thing about SEC-regulated markets - unlike the various cryptocurrency markets - is that it's possible for trades to be rolled back if they are "clearly erroneous". That isn't perfect - if the data is only a little off, it might not be possible to get a trade rolled back - but it tends to limit how much havoc is called. https://www.sec.gov/news/press/2009/2009-215.htm (My understanding is that trades can also…
Does that SEC possibility apply to Google Finance stock data? It's not like they're a proper broker or official provider if data (i.e. most of the affected financial sites have ample "price inaccuacy" disclosures).
In this case, if it was only the data going to out to third party stock tickers, then it probably doesn't apply. Services like Google and Yahoo finance make it really clear on their sites that the data isn't necessarily accurate, can be delayed, and isn't for trading purposes, so nobody should have been making trading decisions based solely on this data anyway.