A trading firm put a large sell order on TASE this afternoon, with an upper limit of 0.01 shekel. The prices of the stocks sold suddenly fell to 0.01 shekel (- 99% of the starting price, in some cases) and the stock exchange collapsed. After many millions of shekels changing hands, TASE computer automatically shut down the market. Now they are working on unmaking those trades. I dont know if they have a legal basis to do that. Orders are orders and they should be paid even if the trade was done by mistake. If not, everyone can claim back their losses from unlucky bets. There cannot be so privileged traders in a market.
1 comment:
The losers can declare force majeure and refuse to pay. I would too. Suppose one ran a jewelry shop and one of the kids sold an item marked $1000.00 for $1.00000 would you let it pass? There is custom and tradition in pricing. In this case the computers did not embody the proper business rules as such an eventuality was unanticipated by the programmers. Someone screwed up in keying the limits, in a physical market one would immediately rectify the error, the computer systems should behave in a similar way as they are supposed to be models of real behaviour.
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