Dark Days at Knight Capital
Despite all efforts to corral Wall Street to avert a crisis, avoid market collapse, and instill confidence in the system, guess what happens. Yet another major misstep in the marketplace by one of its big participants. And not just the rare market mistake that occurs once every year or two. Missteps, hiccups, and strange collapses seem to be occurring these days just about every other week. This week, it's Knight Capital , the equities market-making firm that announced losses of over $400 million after it launched new software in its trading systems. Software errors and technology glitches led the firm's black boxes to spew large orders of errant trades. By the time the firm's humans (not machines) could discover what was happening, it was too late. The losses had piled up on trades the firm had no idea it had booked and would have never wanted to make in the first place. The losses wiped out about half of its book-value equity, and now it struggles to survive in...
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