Banking and Markets
Trading systems, payment rails, and the settlement plumbing underneath them, where a single mistyped field moves in seconds and unwinds over years.
3 articles in this arc
45 Minutes: How a Dead Feature Flag Destroyed Knight Capital
One server out of eight ran old code. A repurposed feature flag woke that code up at the opening bell. By 10:15 a.m., a firm whose trading was about a tenth of all US listed equity volume had lost 440 million dollars and, within a year, its independence.
The 900 Million Dollar Checkbox
Citibank meant to send 7.8 million dollars of interest. A confusing loan software interface sent the entire 900 million principal instead. Then a court ruled, for a while, that some recipients could keep it.
Sell One Share for 610,000 Yen. He Typed 610,000 Shares for 1 Yen.
A Mizuho trader inverted a price and a quantity. The order was for 41 times the entire company's shares. Then the system would not let him cancel it.
