Hmmm. I thought the “error” was just about P&G and the Dow. And how is it the NASDAQ can just “cancel” trades between a certain period? Yes, they say they’ll target only the ones that plunged by 60% or more, yet they’re not applying that rule to all stocks and trades. So, now we’re supposed to believe that the freakish P&G slide, made by a guy with fat fingers or something, also happened to cause the exact same sort of slide over at a completely different exchange?

I think not. I do smell the shenanigans and it stinks of China or Islamists.

Nasdaq to Cancel U.S. Trades That Moved More Than 60%

Nasdaq OMX Group Inc. said it will cancel trades of 286 securities that fell or rose more than 60 percent from their prices at 2:40 p.m. New York time, just before U.S. equities plummeted.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged almost 1,000 points before trimming its drop and ended down 347.80 points, or 3.2 percent, at 10,520.32. About $700 billion of U.S. stock- market value was wiped out in less than 10 minutes, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Nasdaq, which investigated trades between 2:40 p.m. and 3 p.m., said it didn’t find any technology or system issues that caused declines of as much as 99.9 percent in some shares. Citigroup Inc. may have been the firm that made an erroneous trade, CNBC said, citing “multiple sources.” New York-based Citigroup said it found “no evidence” of erroneous trades, and CME Group Inc. said the bank’s activity in CME stock index futures didn’t appear to be “irregular or unusual.” […]

Accenture Plc and Exelon Corp. were on Nasdaq’s list of companies and dropped more than 60 percent as U.S. equities tumbled, before recovering by the close. The list also included some bearish exchange-traded funds that surged as stocks fell.

The decision means that trades in Cincinnati-based Procter & Gamble Co., which slid as much as 37 percent for the biggest intraday drop in the Dow industrials, would stand. The world’s largest consumer products company said stock trades that pushed its shares down were probably an error.

Philip Morris International Inc. of New York, which sank as much as 96 percent to $2, also wasn’t included on the list of companies whose trades would be canceled.

Accenture, the second-biggest technology consulting company, fell more than 99 percent to a penny. All trades executed below $17.74 have been canceled, Bloomberg data showed. The stock closed down 2.6 percent at $41.09.

Exelon, the Chicago-based utility company, plummeted to a hundredth of a penny before closing down 4.2 percent at $41.86.

So, whatever happened with trades in P&G won’t be cancelled, and neither will Philip Morris which sank 96%, but 286 other securities trades will be cancelled.

From the Wall Street Journal:

The Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission said they were working with other regulators to review “unusual trading activity.” The major U.S. stock exchanges said they were looking for trading glitches and examining potentially erroneous trades in multiple stocks. Major exchanges said they will cancel erroneous trades that occurred during the selloff.

Yeah, I think there was a fat-fingered guy who chose the wrong consonant for one trade just like there was a middle-aged white guy in Times Square ready to blow everyone up because he was mad at the health care garbage. Mmmm, mmmm, mmmm.

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8 Comments | Leave a comment
  1. Maynard says:

    I understand the SEC is also investigating a report of a one-armed man seen fleeing the scene. (The report is considered credible because the suspect is Caucasian, and may possibly be Christian.)

    • IloiloKano says:

      Oh, that was me.

      I was putting on a jacket at the time, but my left elbow got caught in the sleeve, so it may have looked like I only had one arm.

      However, I am indeed guilty of being Caucasian and Christian. Sorry.

  2. LJZumpano says:

    heard he spilled coffee on his keyboard and was trying to blot it up when his fingers hit the wrong keys. The powdered sugar donut he was dipping into the coffee at the time of the spill didn’t help either. It was quite messy.

  3. MRFIXIT says:

    I’m not surprised. The big boys have automated trading systems that trigger on a wide range of criteria. A massive sell-off of P&G, a consumer staples giant, could be keyed into lots of other programs, as they are part of the leading indicators for the economy in general. The big glitch, would trigger other sales that would cascade into a massive freefall. Many of the trades will be no good, or generate an FTD (fail to deliver). The seller has 72 hours to deliver the stock after the trade was made. I think the trade cancellations are an attempt to correct the automatically traded positions, and these can be cancelled within the 72 hour window, if it’s between brokers (you and I could not do this).

    What is fishy is that the amounts are entered as numbers. You don’t type a “B” intead of a “M”, you enter 16,000,000 or 16,000,000,000. I’ve watched real time market services before, and the numbers come in as little as 10 shares, which would be tough to enter as .00001M. That makes no sense, but I’ve never placed orders through one of those systems either.

    I think everybody’s jittery about Greece, and it will indeed spread to Portugal, Spain, Italy, and Ireland. England is not part of the EU, but it has it’s own unsustainable burden of entitlement spending and accompanying debt. When it goes it will be fast, like a one hour meltdown. Everybody in Russia went to bed one friday night, with about 11 of their Rubles equal to one U.S. Dollar. When they woke up monday morning, they were in Zimbabwe territory, virtually wiped out over a week-end.

  4. BarbaraM says:

    Announcement was made that certain trades will be disqualified, but the retail client (Joe Public= us) is the big loser once again. Stop losses were triggered, then the stock rebounded to pricing higher than the stop, so money was LOST, and not recouped. Almost like getting your pocket picked.
    Trading activity was simply nonsensical. Look at the various ishares, many dropped instantaneously from $60 to just a few cents, and you can see the actual trades! Look at IWF as an example…plummeted from $50 and then traded 89,570 shares at 15 CENTS (at 2:48 PM)!!! The stock then recovered in a matter of minutes and traded again at $50.11 by 3:06 PM. The purchaser of those 89,570 shares gained an instantaneous “profit” of $4.4 million, and that was just a single ETF…there are many other ishares fund showing the exact same pattern! Somebody or something managed to literally “disconnect” the pricing mechanism of the market and grabbed everything they could get for nearly “zero.” Either this is a severe systemic glitch, or market manipulation at its absolute worst.

  5. TERI148 says:

    Don’t worry, Tammy. I just read Urkel and Ram, never let a crisis go to waste, Emmanual are going to have a full investigation on this matter. Just like the oil exploitation. Oh sorry. ;( I meant oil explosion.

  6. IloiloKano says:

    Wanna bet no George Soros trades will be cancelled? http://www.georgesoros.com/

  7. Laura says:

    I was just thinking too… this is a Soros thing

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