at Finger, the world's most
damaging trader, struck again
yesterday in the local market.
On what is becoming an increasingly
rare thing an up day for the market
traders had a moment of shock and
panic when the indices went plunging
into the red.
After getting off to a flyer on the back
of a stronger Wall Street session and
hovering around the plus 100 points
level into the early afternoon, the
indices nosedived to be down 2
points at 2:20pm yesterday.
The culprit was a sell order for just Leg 1
over 500,000 QBE Insurance shares
at 2, against previous levels of
$22.85. With QBE accounting for 2 per
cent of the S&P ASX 200, the sales
that went through between 1 and 3
a share after that order were enough
to drag the index 100 points lower and
reduce QBE to penny dreadful status.
Within minutes, the very important
sounding Dispute Governors
Committee a legacy of the days when
there was a trading floor and
unimpeachable fellows know as Floor
Governors were called on to resolve
disputes had met and decided the Leg 2
trades would be cancelled. In fact, any
trades that went through under
$22.20 and there were a good many
were cancelled.
And the culprit? Many of the trading
desks said Bell Potter, and others still
Southern Cross though they may
have been confused by the recent
merger of the two firms.
Neither owned up. Bell denied it,
while admitting that it had temporarily
lost its connection to the CHESS
system yesterday and Southern
Cross referred us to the ASX, which
didn't want to name names. Leg 3