02 August 2012

The $10,000,000 Per Minute Glitch

Maybe it was a "data error," or "human error," but why isn't this failure being seen as a software systems quality lapse? The firm that performed 11 percent of all trades in U.S. stocks, according to the NY Times, suffered losses approaching $10M/minute, ". . . because of new trading software that had been installed." Knight Capital, based in Jersey City, has been a clear beneficiary of software-enabled trading, Knight's CEO said that the failure was introduced the night before when the it installed an update to prepare for a change in NYSE Euronext the following day.

A casual search today finds no news from technology outlets, though this is clearly a software quality engineering issue. 

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