'Fat finger' stock market gaffe wipes out £380bn of shares as trader gets figures badly wrong

Aug 15, 2023

Transactions totalling an incredible £380 billion - more than Sweden's economy - were overturned in one of the biggest ever trading errors

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Shares worth £380 billion - more than Sweden's economy - had to be cancelled after one of the biggest 'fat finger' errors in stock market history.

Some 42 of Japan's biggest companies such as Sony , Honda and Toyota were overturned after a trader error cost a whopping 67.78 trillion yen - £380 billion - according to the Bloomberg financial news service .

Ayako Sera, a market strategist at Sumitomo Mitsui Trust Bank, told Bloomberg: "I've never heard of orders this big being cancelled before."

The largest single order totalled 1.96 billion shares in Toyota worth 12.68 trillion yen - £71.4 billion.

Gavin Parry, managing director at Hong Kong-based Parry International Trading, said: "It's not rocket science that there was a fat finger here, but it reopens the question about accountability."

The trader has not been identified.

It is not the first time a trading error, commonly known as a 'fat finger', has hit Japan.

In 2005, the head of the Exchange resigned after one trader mistakenly sold 41 times more shares in his company than were available, which left Mizuho Securities 27 billion yen.

The world of trading was recently depicted in Martin Scorsese's acclaimed film, The Wolf Of Wall Street. Check out the trailer below.