Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
This didn't cause the market to shut down. It may have caused GS to lose some money.
Some high profile companies/people fucked up and lost money, so the market shut down.
Why didn't it shut down when I lost money in the stock market? Oh right, $1500 isn't enough for me to matter.
I'm sure I'm wrong on this. Someone correct me!
When your loss can trigger a sell wave, they'll shut the market down to investigate. The market wasn't shut down because GS lost money, but because something was obviously systematically wrong, and they wanted to figure out what it was before allowing more trades. Once they found out what it was, they could have brought everything back up, as it was just a bad algorithm used by a single (large) trader.
it's kind of like if you get hit with a pebble vs hearing a loud rumbling sound and getting pelted with pebbles -- you're more likely to vacate the area and then investigate in the second instance, even if it's the same monkey hitting you with multiple pebbles.
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?
http://saveie6.com/
Wreck a few trades: Suspension! Wreck the global economy: Free federal loans and an even greater share of aggregate wealth!
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.
And it just happens that it provides a great way for the 1% to remain the 1% while bleeding everyone else dry.
It's a good argument for not allowing any legal fiction to be too big to fail (or jail).
Still, most of GS bad trades have been DK'ed. You see, for Goldman Sachs this is 'Heads we win, tails we win' kind of market. They're above the law in every respect. I'm curious what will happen to those tech folks. Will Goldman jail them in retaliation like they did with Aleynikov ? As much as they can call puppet US government to overturn their bad trades, they also can call govt to jail anyone they wish ...