Goldman Suspends 4 Senior Tech Specialists After Trading Glitch

First time accepted submitter sbjornda writes "A glitch in an internal system led to erroneous trades on some funds whose listings begin with the letters H through L. Goldman Sachs has put four Senior Technology Specialists on administrative leave as a result. From the article: 'The system, called a "trading axis," monitors the Wall Street bank's inventory to determine whether it should be a more aggressive buyer or seller in the market. But a technical error misinterpreted non-binding indications of interest, or IOIs, as firm bids and offers, leading to some trades that were vastly out of line with where market prices were, Reuters reported previously, citing a source familiar with the matter.'"

Comments

Re:Let me get this straight

[olsmeister]

This didn't cause the market to shut down. It may have caused GS to lose some money.

Re:Tokens.

[You're All Wrong]

Have some respect, that's your government you're insulting! http://geke.us/GS.html

(OT - And incidentally, in case anyone interprets my .sig as being anti-Obama, I first set it while Bush was in power, and just never got round to changing it. For obvious reasons.)

Re:Tokens.

[Billly Gates]

Look the CEO's and senior traders who play games of golf and have 2 hour elaborate lunches at the best NYC restaurants create all this value through their handwork.

They do not need to be distracted by the mundane details of actually trading and need to just think of ideas all day instead. Distractions need to be minimized as do work. ... now these IT guys who program the computers that earn them the flash trading? They are greedy COST CENTERS. They have no value! Lazy! Can be replaced by H1B1 visas faster than you can say campaign contribution. Fire them as they do not create value at all.

By playing golf and thinking mysterious powers are telepathically entered into the HFT systems and money is just generated out of thin air. I think these guys need a big bonus for being so smart for this? Don't you?

Re:Let me get this straight

[Jayfar]

Some high profile companies/people fucked up and lost money, so the market shut down.

Er no, this was an unrelated glitch with Goldman 2 days *before* last weeks Nasdaq shutdown.

Re:Some are more equal than others.

[timeOday]

Oh boy, you're right! Quoting the Wall Street Journal:

After sifting through each trade, exchanges canceled or adjusted many of the trades.

Their actions stanched what would have been an even more costly mistake. People familiar with the matter last week estimated that Goldman's losses could have reached hundreds of millions of dollars.

...

At NYSE Amex, the exchange will cancel trades in most cases of obvious error, unless the traders on both sides are market makers, or exchange members who facilitate the trading in a given stock's options to ensure fair and orderly markets. Goldman has a market-making unit, but in this case, NYSE Amex classified the orders as coming from a broker-dealer firm.

Re:Some are more equal than others.

[adolf]

It is thus proven: GS is both too big to fail, and too big to make mistakes.

Re:Let me get this straight

[lgw]

Goldman Sacks should never be confused with 1%ers They're the 0.000001%ers. The regulators that are supposed to regulate GS? Mostly former or future GS employees (or both). If the people who decided to suspend trading weren't GS employees once, they will be soon.

The 1% is doctors, lawyers, and successful small business owners, who have just as much power here as you do. It's a bad term if you want to discuss the one company that owns more of the government than anyone else!