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Monday, October 21, 2013

The Four Hundred Sixty Five Million Dollar Software Bug

I love the story of a really good bug, and this one is a $465M whopper:
"While processing 212 small retail orders that Knight had received from its customers,
SMARS routed millions of orders into the market over a 45-minute period, and obtained over 4
million executions in 154 stocks for more than 397 million shares. By the time that Knight
stopped sending the orders, Knight had assumed a net long position in 80 stocks of approximately
$3.5 billion and a net short position in 74 stocks of approximately $3.15 billion"
http://www.sec.gov/litigation/admin/2013/34-70694.pdf 

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