Bad keystroke leads to $251 million stock buy

Trader who pressed the wrong key is fired, costs her company potentially more than $12 million.

The story "Bad keystroke leads to $251 million stock buy" published July 1, 2005 at 2:28 AM is no longer available on CNET News.

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Ouch!

What do say on an incident like that-- "Oups" or "OH! S@*t" "Umm i just remembered i pulled the keys off my keyboard to clean them and i got a few keys backwards, i guess and oh BTW my cats sick and i got to run home"

I wonder if that qualified for a record, imagine being branded as the one key stroke f#%k up.

[j3st3r]

and the irony is......

Ohhhhh dear, this would have to be the one time in life when someone actually wished they had the Microsoft command clarification "Are you sure?"... "Positive?"... "Last chance now!!"... "This is it"... "I'm going to do it!!!"

Then to add insult the company fires the employee for not being familiar with new systems, wouldn't retraining be a better move? After all a replacement will have to be trained in the position and the shares are going to be held on the off chance they increase in value.

Good time for a political message. Support the ACTU in their push against the Liberal Party's removal of unfair dismissal laws or this could be the swift action faced by all Australian workers for even a minor error.

Loosing out on 12 mn$

Aren't there some kind of security measures to avoid such a thing from happening ..I mean loosing 12 mn$ because of hitting the wrong key stroke just sounds ridiculous ..

[Razzl]

Burning the straw man...

Okay, let's see how everyone came out: The managers in charge of training didn't get fired. The managers in charge of trading procedures didn't get fired. How to stop this type of thing from happening again? Fire the first trainee who falls into the trap created by defective management. That should solve the problem and everyone can go back to what they were doing. Nice job...your shareholders will feel very reassured...

Did inadequate training cause the error?

The news article states that the employee was unfamiliar with the new computer system. It should be considered that maybe the employees supervisor is at fault by not providing adequate training and should be fired is stead of the trader. All too often we see the fault passed down to the easiest person to blame. Successful companies thrive on well trained and responsible employees. Small investment in training can pay bid dividends in the long run.