Without a doubt, the phrase of the day is fat-finger. We all know what it means and a lot of people today found out exactly what it can do (not to be confused with sausage fingers, that’s a whole nother story). With the Dow dropping almost 1000 points today, some are attributing this sudden change to a simple mistake made by a trader. Instead of entering an order to sell a million shares, it was fat-fingered in as an order to sell a billion shares. An order like that is bound to create a domino effect, where automated sell triggers start firing and people start panicking.
We all work with somebody that has “fat-fingers” and there’s nothing worse than losing your work because of a foolish mistake.
That’s why it’s important to make sure you always have a backup system in place. Ideally, you’re making regular backups of your work and saving your files at crucial points. But if you’re one of those that are gambling on never being fat-fingered, you might want to check your drink.