Wednesday, May 14, 2008

The Mistake

It is not very often that I will admit to making a mistake. Instead I will blame it on technology, operations and most often, my gorah Director. But today, I fucked up, and luckily for me, I fucked up small. I was given an order to buy a million dollars of stock in the last 20 mins in HK. The is generally peanuts and I happily entered into my algo trading software. The price moved away from me a bit so I adjusted the limit. And again. And again. I was not in the least bit concerned about this order until I realised that the price of the stock was 3.X...and if I kept moving X up 10 bps, it adds up very fast.

By the time I told my Director that the price had moved and he, head clutched in pain, had told me to stop, I had ramped the price up 4%. In horror, we both watched the last 2 minutes hoping the price wouldn't plummet after we were done. It held steady for the first 10 seconds and then, down she went. I was weighing my options in manual labour when some kind and generous soul stabilized the price at only 1% below our purchase price. Saved.

Check it out if you have Bloomberg, 670 HK - China Eastern Airlines, the last ten minutes are me.

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