NYSE Tuesday opening mayhem traced to a staffer who left a backup system running
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Re: NYSE Tuesday opening mayhem traced to a staffer who left a backup system running
#2Re: NYSE Tuesday opening mayhem traced to a staffer who left a backup system running
#3Seems so weird to not have automated checks for something that seems to be described as "someone left the light on" and also not have the exchange automatically initiate itself. However, it still isn't that clear what the problem was. Were prices not "real" or correct?
Stuff like this will happen more and more. We treat software driven systems rather recklessly.
Re: NYSE Tuesday opening mayhem traced to a staffer who left a backup system running
#4Seems so weird to not have automated checks for something that seems to be described as "someone left the light on" and also not have the exchange automatically initiate itself. However, it still isn't that clear what the problem was. Were prices not "real" or correct? Stuff like this will happen more and more. We treat software driven systems rather recklessly.
More automation -> more code -> more things to go wrong
Re: NYSE Tuesday opening mayhem traced to a staffer who left a backup system running
#5I am short a couple dozen naked Feb 3 calls on a lot of affected tickers and almost had a heart attack when looking at one of them on my phone. Thankfully I was not in front of my computer at the time because I have no idea how my broker was managing my margin at open.
Re: NYSE Tuesday opening mayhem traced to a staffer who left a backup system running
#6Seems so weird to not have automated checks for something that seems to be described as "someone left the light on" and also not have the exchange automatically initiate itself. However, it still isn't that clear what the problem was. Were prices not "real" or correct? Stuff like this will happen more and more. We treat software driven systems rather recklessly.
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Re: NYSE Tuesday opening mayhem traced to a staffer who left a backup system running
#7Seems so weird to not have automated checks for something that seems to be described as "someone left the light on" and also not have the exchange automatically initiate itself. However, it still isn't that clear what the problem was. Were prices not "real" or correct? Stuff like this will happen more and more. We treat software driven systems rather recklessly.
The auction is meant to find a stable price and can have some wild prices coming in, because no matching happens at the point of entry, the market will naturally find a level before trading commences. In this case, those wild prices were matching, resulting in crazy trades no-one would have expected.
You'd be surprised how many manual processes there are in places like this. It's a combination of legacy systems / processes, and a general paranoia around automation going wrong. I wouldn't be surprised if they always have someone there to shepherd the system along.
Re: NYSE Tuesday opening mayhem traced to a staffer who left a backup system running
#8Seems so weird to not have automated checks for something that seems to be described as "someone left the light on" and also not have the exchange automatically initiate itself. However, it still isn't that clear what the problem was. Were prices not "real" or correct? Stuff like this will happen more and more. We treat software driven systems rather recklessly.
More automation -> more code -> more things to go wrong
The great thing about automation is the breadth, depth and speed at which I can propagate mistakes.
Re: NYSE Tuesday opening mayhem traced to a staffer who left a backup system running
#9Seems so weird to not have automated checks for something that seems to be described as "someone left the light on" and also not have the exchange automatically initiate itself. However, it still isn't that clear what the problem was. Were prices not "real" or correct? Stuff like this will happen more and more. We treat software driven systems rather recklessly.
Matt Levine at Bloomberg gives a good explanation:
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-01-25/nyse-f...
Basically at the market open all the requests to buy and sell get matched at the same "open" auction price, then (a second later) the orders get sent to the order book, where the price can go up and down based on size. Because the system didn't think there was an opening, there wasn't the opening auction, the prices went straight to the book and there were large swings in price.