This content was published on May 03, 2022 – 13:47
New York, May 3 (EFE).- A human error caused by a Citigroup bank employee yesterday caused drastic falls in the indices of several European stock markets, mainly in those of the Nordic countries (Stockholm in particular).
A Citigroup source acknowledged today to the specialized channel CNBC that one of its brokers “made a mistake when imputing a transaction,” adding: “In a matter of minutes, we identified the error and corrected it.”
However, that did not prevent the so-called “flash crash” effect, which defines a sharp drop followed by a quick recovery.
The “panic moment” was experienced just before 8 am in London, and did not have more serious repercussions as it is a public holiday in many countries and stock market activity has been reduced.
At that time, the OMX 30 index of the Stockholm Stock Exchange fell 8% (although throughout the day it recovered until closing at -1.9%), and other European stock markets also reacted downwards , apparently infected by the effects of Stockholm.
The error assumed by Citigroup today is often called a “fat finger error,” when a stockbroker pushes the wrong button and produces the opposite effect as intended.
There are times when this “wrong key” is not so much the result of a mistake as an intentional action, as was the case of Navinder Singh Sarao, who caused a “flash crash” in 2010 from his own room in London and was later tried in the United States and sentenced to one year of house arrest.
That same 2010, the United States had classified “spoofing” as a new crime, which consists of a stockbroker putting thousands of shares up for sale and then, minutes before execution, canceling the operation or changing it, having collected profits. millionaires in the process. EFE
fjo / jfu / ie
� EFE 2022. The redistribution and redistribution of all or part of the contents of EFE services is expressly prohibited, without the prior and express consent of Agencia EFE SA
–
