Whoops... finger on the wrong button
Ag@whd
As a result, we cheer the trainee trader at a German bank in the City of
London. Last week he pressed the wrong button on his keyboard and
accidentally sold GBP 11.5 billion of German bond futures contracts,
costing his employer GBP 10 million at a keystroke.
Back in the era of open outcry his predecessors had to work for the best
part of a morning to lose that amount of money.
Adrian
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Designers of video capture/filter/processing systems for aircraft
John Greetham
> We've all made mistakes, but where there's a whopper, there's a way.
> As a result, we cheer the trainee trader at a German bank in the City of
> London. Last week he pressed the wrong button on his keyboard and
> accidentally sold GBP 11.5 billion of German bond futures contracts,
> costing his employer GBP 10 million at a keystroke.
> Back in the era of open outcry his predecessors had to work for the best
> part of a morning to lose that amount of money.
When I first heard this story the 'detail' was that the trainee
missed a decimal point out of a transaction.
Probably more to the point of interest though is the fact that he
hadn't even received his first pay check!!
JG
Ag@whd
wrote these words:
> from w...@directors-1.zetnet.zet (Ag@whd) contains these words:
>
>> We've all made mistakes, but where there's a whopper, there's a way.
>
>When I first heard this story the 'detail' was that the trainee
>missed a decimal point out of a transaction.
>Probably more to the point of interest though is the fact that he
>hadn't even received his first pay check!!
A junior trader cost his employers an estimated 10 million pounds yesterday
after a training exercise went disastrously wrong and he ended up taking
part in an 11.5-billion-pound transaction. The trader, who is believed
to work for a German financial institution, pressed the wrong buttons on
his computer and caused panic on dealing floors in the City. Screens
flashed up with the news that someone wanted to sell 130,000 German bond
futures contracts, worth in excess of #11.5 billion. [...]
The German-based trader's employers are contractually obliged to carry
out the transaction, and will be forced to buy futures contracts in the
open marketplace to complete it. One banker said: "His employers must
have extremely lax controls. A trade that size should have sent alarm
bells ringing." [...]
German bond futures are now predominantly traded on Eurex, a German-based
electronic exchange, on which traders say it is relatively easy to enter
the dealing programme instead of the training simulation programme.
[...]