Investors who bought shares in Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE:BRK.A) at a significant discount due to a technical glitch will have their trades canceled by the New York Stock Exchange.
On June 3, a data error caused the stock price of Berkshire Hathaway to plummet to $185 per share, a dramatic fall from its previous close of over $620,000. This glitch offered an apparent discount of more than 99% on the company led by Warren Buffett. Consequently, an investor who purchased $925 worth of shares at this erroneous price would have seen their investment valued at over $3 million today.
Last week, traders experienced a similar disruption when live data from the S&P 500 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average vanished from screens for about an hour, as reported by the Financial Times. Although the system returned to normal, the cause of the outage is still under investigation.
While the NYSE issue was resolved with minimal consequences, a similar incident on the London Stock Exchange in May 2022 had significant repercussions for Citigroup (NYSE:C).
A London trader bypassed numerous warnings to create a trading basket valued at $444 billion. Despite Citigroup’s internal management systems blocking $255 billion, a basket worth $189 billion was still released to global markets. A total of $1.4 billion in equities were sold across various European exchanges before the order was canceled. As a result, Citigroup was fined nearly $70 million by the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority for the oversight and related issues.
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