Reply #8: A typo has resulted in massive stock losses before-Japan in 2005

[SemiCharmedQuark]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10394551/

"Japan’s government rebuked the Tokyo Stock Exchange and one of the country’s biggest brokerage firms Friday after a typing error caused Mizuho Securities Co. to lose at least 27 billion yen ($225 million) on a stock trade.

The error roiled the Japanese market, while jitters over the reliability of the exchange’s trading system contributing to a 1.95 percent drop in the benchmark Nikkei 225 index Thursday.

...

The trouble began Thursday morning, when Mizuho Securities tried to sell 610,000 shares at 1 yen (less than a penny) apiece of a job recruiting firm called J-Com Co., which was having its public debut on the exchange.

It had actually intended to sell 1 share at 610,000 yen ($5,041).

Worse still, the number of shares in Mizuho’s order was 41 times the number of J-Com’s outstanding shares, but the Tokyo Stock Exchange processed the order anyway.

Mizuho says it tried to cancel the order three times, but the exchange said it doesn’t cancel transactions even if they are executed on erroneous orders."



I'm not sure about today. But yes, a typo has screwed up stock markets before.