For others, a big payday(or a big flotation device) when a stock goes from $40 to 1 cent in less than an hour. This is like when you hit a big jackpot these days in the casino and they tell you that the machine malfunctioned. The stock market game is fixed. Is there any doubt any more? All of the workers pension retirement money invested there, just to be scammed away. Tsk, tsk.
The big question is what happens to all the derivative bets made on the values of the underlying trades that have been cancelled? They are worth much more (in fantasy money) than the underlying stocks. Oops.
from CNN Money:
“Accenture (ACN) fell from $40.13 at 2:45 p.m. all the way to just 1 cent before quickly rising back to $39.57.
Sam Adams maker Boston Beer Co. (SAM) also fell to a penny before recovering to $55.82.
Oxford Industries (OXM) tanked to $1.34 before soaring back to $19.51 a minute later.
But some other wild trades were not canceled by Nasdaq. For instance, Apple (AAPL, Fortune 500) traded down 22% to $199.25 before recovering, but those trades were upheld.
Most notably, Nasdaq did not cancel trades of Procter & Gamble (PG, Fortune 500) or 3M (MMM, Fortune 500), which momentarily fell 37% and 22%, respectively.”
Here is a list of the canceled stock trades, courtesy of Nasdaq:
http://money.cnn.com/2010/05/07/markets/explaining_wall_street_turmoil/