China stocks jump 6% in mystery spike

money.cnn.com

2 pointsrossjudson2 comments

I had some stock-watching extended family members flipping out about this one last night. ;)

It went up, it went down, by a huge amount in a matter of minutes. At first authorities apparently said it was natural, but now there's an investigation underway.

Crazy coincidence? Automated trading run amuck? Or hackery?

Supposedly it was a "fat-finger" by a Chinese state-owned equity firm (Everbright securities). In other words, an arbitrage algo gone wrong. Cost the firm $1 billion and they are now suspended from trading for who knows how long.

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