Typo mistakes12/14/2023 ![]() ![]() Stress is known to affect visual attention, which means taking a deep breath and taking your time when entering data. Some ways to avoid your fat finger moment, then, hopefully when the stakes are not as high as death or bankruptcy. Quickmeme/Fox 12 ways to avoid a fat finger moment An investigation into JP Morgan’s US$5.8 billion loss in 2012, the so-called “ London Whale” trading debacle, blamed the amount of data entry needed to use a mathematical model developed in Excel. Mistyping numbers into a spreadsheet has proven equally problematic. You don’t need to be using online trading systems to lose big money. The list of shame goes on, but there are probably far more smaller mistakes made every day. In 2001 a trader at Lehman Brothers who intended to sell £3m of BP and AstraZeneca stocks added two zeros, selling £300m. ![]() In 2002 a New York trader caused the Dow Jones index to plunge 100 points when he accidentally inflated his US$4m order to US$4 billion. In 2009, another Japanese trader ordered £22 billion worth of shares in video game developer Capcom when he intended to buy £220,000. This US$617 billion typo isn’t the first time such errors have been made, but it’s probably the largest. Perhaps what’s surprising is not so much that these mistakes are made, but that they happen so often traders have a name for it: a “fat finger” error, when someone enters a number they hadn’t intended, perhaps wrong by several decimal places, and generally to the bank’s loss. Have you ever ordered too many items online – say, buying 20 courgettes when you meant two? Then you might feel a little sorry for the anonymous broker in Japan who lost US$617 billion to a trading typo error. ![]()
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