Swedish Stock Exchange Hit By Programming Snafu

New submitter whizzter writes "I was reading the Swedish national news today and an image in a stock exchange related article struck my eye. An order had been placed for 4 294 967 290 futures (0xfffffffa or -6 if treated as a 32-bit signed integer), each valued at approximately 16,000 USD, giving a neat total of almost 69 trillion USD. The order apparently started to affect valuations and was later annulled, however it is said to have caused residual effects in the system and trading was halted for several hours."

Comments

Sven and Ole Found a Trading App

[eldavojohn]

Sven: Hey der Ole, check out dis new app I got on my phone here.
Ole: *takes the phone and looks at the screen* Oh hey idn't dat neat? A stock trading app!
Sven: Yeah I'm like a big shot power björker now! Börk! Börk! Börk!
Ole: Oh ja, you betcha, hey I gotta a hot tip, I'm gonna buy six futures of Ikea for ya.
Sven: Ole, you idiot! Stop that, I've only got a few cents on my account.
Ole: Oh! Jajaja, oops, you're in da red now. Oofta, I'll fix this here, lemme just sell 'em real quick.
Sven: No, stop, you'll just make things worse!
Ole: I don't see a 'sell' button on dis thing, oh, I know! *punches some buttons* Oh dear. Oh shoot. Ja, I'm in a little over my head here, Sven.
Sven: *grabs the phone* Negative 460 trillion dollars!? OLE, WHAT DID YOU DO?
Ole: Oh well, ya see, I just bought negative six shares, ja? To undo me buying six positive shares, ja? And I guess der was like ... some underflow involved der? With de app, ja? Ah gosh gee, Sven, I'm sorry, I'll pay ya back after I settle up with da liquor store first, of course.

Re:Sven and Ole Found a Trading App

[Anonymous Coward]

As a Swede I found the above posts very funny, though some things could be pointed out for the sake of clarity.

1) Björk is actually from Iceland. Can we elect The Swedish House Mafia as representatives of our culture instead please?
2) While I think Swedes on average consume a bit more hard liquor than the US, it's nothing like eastern Europe. We are mostly a beer people, and we are not afraid to import quality stuff. Though I guess in comparison to what goes for beer in the US, it's can almost be considered hard liquor ;-)
3) IKEA isn't a publicly traded company, and it's now owned by what is a series of (supposedly) non-profit trusts across the world with the single objective to keep it alive forever. Yes, Billy the bookcase will probably outlive you.

Stop annulling these trades.

[Anonymous Coward]

The way to prevent this kind of mistaken (or even malicious) trade is to stop protecting the trader by canceling the trade as soon as the mistake is realized. If you issue a trade order, you should be liable for paying for it. If you can't, normal bankruptcy laws should apply.

Re:Good Point Here

[vlm]

This is why you always use dynamic storage like a link list when you potentially have to deal with numbers bigger then the address bus width.

Naah just use a FLOAT. After all, nothing bad could ever happen when doing financial calcs with FLOATs, right?

(note to sarcasm impaired... ahh on 1.9999999nd thought forget about it)