NASDAQ hack?
October 5, 2008
The NASDAQ is investigating “erroneous trades routed from another exchange” which caused Google shares to drop to one cent in the final minutes of trading on the last day of the third quarter. The trades were canceled and presumably all derivatives trades were adjusted as well, but no further information has been released about the cause. Given the imperfect nature of all computer systems and the chaotic trading environment in the wake of the credit crisis, the “glitch” scenario is plausible. I’m not an expert on trading systems (though I did sell systems Wall Street firms and the NYSE for IBM), but I will say this event is extremely unusual. What caught my eye was that this has happened to Google once before. If you were a hacker trying to cause mischief in the stock market which stock would you choose?
