A Broker’s Mistake
In 2005, a broker accidentally listed the stock for the company J-Com as 610,000 shares for 1 yen each when the company actually intended to sell the shares at 610,000 yen each. This typo caused the stock’s price to jack knife and led to a major internal investigation. Luckily, the brokerage firm behind the mistake bought most of the shares back and recovered the stock’s price, but their mistake still cost them $225 million. After this incident, everyone at the firm made sure to double check their work.