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Citi Missed a Fat Finger

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Re: Citi Missed a Fat Finger

#61

Post by blackeyeblitzar »

HL33tibCe7 wrote: post #12
blackeyeblitzar wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a phenomenon in so many different jobs, and is called “alarm fatigue”. From https://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/01/weekinreview/01wald.html : > On Tuesday, the National Transportation Safety Board said that a crash last year on the Washington subway system that killed nine people had happened partly because train dispatchers had been ignoring 9,000 alarms per week. Air traffic controllers, nuclear plant operators…

> nurses in intensive-care units and others do the same. The last time I was in hospital, I came out the next day and my ears were ringing for a couple of days from the _constant_ ringing of alarms.

Yes I really hate that at hospitals. I am certain it is bad for health and recovery of patients and unnecessarily increases stress for everyone.

Re: Citi Missed a Fat Finger

#62

Post by pjacotg »

Arrath wrote: post #6
sickofparadox wrote: post #4

"You get 711 alerts, you only see 18 of them, you are like “ehh 18 alerts is pretty much the normal number,” you override them all without reading." I believe this is called an 'alert that cried wolf'.

Alarm Fatigue

There's a 99% visible episode [1] on this very issue. Worth a listen!

[1] https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/sound-and-health-hosp...

Re: Citi Missed a Fat Finger

#63

Post by tremorscript »

DANmode wrote: post #52
tremorscript wrote: post #51

I like github's solution to deleting a repository. A popup makes you type the repository name before confirming deletion. In this case, if the value is unusually high say greater than 100 billion, make the trader type 100 billion before proceeding. I confess that I also ignore popups and just click ok. This is where i appreciate github asking me to type the name of the repository, just to make sure that I know what I…

How long are these messages that your reading speed doesn't burn through it faster than it takes to click or tap the button...?

Peter see OK button. Peter click OK button. Peter no read or have a thought.

Re: Citi Missed a Fat Finger

#64

Post by gpderetta »

TacticalCoder wrote: post #42
miohtama wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of exchanges and brokers have a dialog window “Looks like unusual order with high price impact - do you really want to execute yes/no” So definitely an UI issue.

A "fat finger" of only 10x is not that much of a fat finger and may not be detected for it's probably nothing out of the ordinary compared to the brokerage account's size. The fat finger in TFA, however, is a quite bigger fat finger: $444 bn instead of $58m. That's 10 000x. That one is, indeed, a UI issue.

That's not just an UI issue, the backend system responsible of executing the order should have caught the out of limits order.

Re: Citi Missed a Fat Finger

#65

Post by csunbird »

hi-v-rocknroll wrote: post #54

When entering and exchanging potentially very large money amounts, it behooves risk management of entered, encoded, and transmitted prices carefully like the following: NDC. N = Length of string D D = [0-9]+\.[0-9]+ C = 2 check digits using IBAN method against ND

> When the trader checked the value of the inputted basket, they were presented with a figure of negative 58 million for the value of the basket (58 million multiplied by -1). The trader saw a ValAtBM of -58,000,000, which was the number they expected to see, and thus they clicked Execute to continue to the next check.

It wouldn't help.

Re: Citi Missed a Fat Finger

#66

Post by stubish »

ploxiln wrote: post #23
dkarl wrote: post #17

> However, as data from that external feed was unavailable, the price of the value of the Index instead defaulted to -1 To me, this reeks of a couple of bad experiences I had repeatedly as a back end developer coordinating with the front end: 1. Demanding that my services always returned correct-looking data, even if it wasn’t available, because they couldn’t (or wouldn’t) handle errors. The story always went like th…

Maybe not as bad, but similar ... I've had a frontend dev say they needed to see designs from the designer before they could add any kind of error message or indicator. The status-quo is just silence, the page just stops doing anything. This is not unusual for various SPAs I've seen around the web. It is unfortunately a typical experience to click something ... no response? click again? wait how long? refresh? hello?…

A few decades ago, we chose the most awful color combinations for the UI of an internal system to encourage the designer to get on with it (they wore multiple hats). By the time I'd left a year or so later, the people using the system had not only accepted these disturbing choices, but claimed to have grown fond of them.

Re: Citi Missed a Fat Finger

#67

Post by Reviving1514 »

jt2190 wrote: post #32
dkarl wrote: post #17

> However, as data from that external feed was unavailable, the price of the value of the Index instead defaulted to -1 To me, this reeks of a couple of bad experiences I had repeatedly as a back end developer coordinating with the front end: 1. Demanding that my services always returned correct-looking data, even if it wasn’t available, because they couldn’t (or wouldn’t) handle errors. The story always went like th…

> if a service returned a 4xx, it would trigger an exception in their front end code, and they didn’t want to tackle the complexity of handling potential errors from a bunch of different back end services I’ve seen this when the frontend team is building a fat client/smart client/Single Page App but they really want to be building a thin client/dumb client/server-rendered app. Basically it’s a technological mismatch,…

I'm working on a project where this choice is relevant. Could I ask what you feel should be considered when making this decision? Thank you!

Re: Citi Missed a Fat Finger

#68

Post by blitzar »

tremorscript wrote: post #51

I like github's solution to deleting a repository. A popup makes you type the repository name before confirming deletion. In this case, if the value is unusually high say greater than 100 billion, make the trader type 100 billion before proceeding. I confess that I also ignore popups and just click ok. This is where i appreciate github asking me to type the name of the repository, just to make sure that I know what I…

I always just copy the thing it told me to write and paste into the relevant field - often without reading or comprehending what it says.

Re: Citi Missed a Fat Finger

#69

Post by seanhunter »

z_zetetic_z wrote: post #20

I've been in the room when it happened. In one memorable incident, a junior trader I sat opposite bought 100 bn Japanese Yen instead of 10 bn. His excuse? "I lost track of the zeros". We'd only hired the guy because he had a PhD and "PhD's are smart" - lol. In his defense the UI was awful. He left soon after...

Me too. Fatfingers happen much more often than the ones that are reported, partly because it's really hard to make UX that is functional for high-performing individuals trying to respond quickly in pressure situations while also protecting them from the consequences of errors.

For example, in one old FX trading system I know about you would type in the cross you wanted (eg say GBP if you wanted GBP/USD) and the amount and then if you hit enter it would execute. If you hit F5 it would execute that number of million of that cross. So say you wanted 10 million, you could type 10000000 and hit enter or you could just go 10 F5 and it would immediately execute 10 million. (ie if you hit F5 you didn't also need to press enter).

F6 was the same, but for billion. And yes it originally had an "are you sure?" chicken box but there was only one flag to disable all chicken boxes and one of the chicken boxes on another part of the system was such a constant pain in the ass that everyone had chicken boxes disabled. So if you fatfingered and hit F6 when you meant F5 you could literally execute a thousand times as much as you intended.

Other than massive wrong amounts, the other one I've seen a lot is people buying something when they thought they were selling and vice versa.

Re: Citi Missed a Fat Finger

#70

Post by breckenedge »

stubish wrote: post #66
ploxiln wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe not as bad, but similar ... I've had a frontend dev say they needed to see designs from the designer before they could add any kind of error message or indicator. The status-quo is just silence, the page just stops doing anything. This is not unusual for various SPAs I've seen around the web. It is unfortunately a typical experience to click something ... no response? click again? wait how long? refresh? hello?…

A few decades ago, we chose the most awful color combinations for the UI of an internal system to encourage the designer to get on with it (they wore multiple hats). By the time I'd left a year or so later, the people using the system had not only accepted these disturbing choices, but claimed to have grown fond of them.

Stockholm syndrome
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