I got a few emails from people who didn’t believe what I posted about all the crazy action on Friday — like ORCL and CMCSA hitting $0.01. Well, maybe they’ll believe the Wall Street Journal, which has finally reported on all those bad trades. This is from the WSJ article ‘Glitches Cancel Electronic Trades’:
If the stock market hasn’t been tough enough, glitches on several electronic exchanges led to thousands of canceled trades and stuck some investors with unexplained losses.
On Friday morning, as traders reacted to the Securities and Exchange Commission’s short-selling ban, dozens of stocks and exchange-traded funds changed hands on electronic exchanges at bizarre prices. Some were more than double their closing levels Thursday; some were at unnaturally low prices, such as one penny.
Exchange officials blamed the erratic trades on unusually high trading volumes and initial confusion surrounding regulators’ decision to ban short sales of hundreds of financial stocks.
