India's National Stock Exchange (NSE) was forced to briefly halt trading this morning after 59 erroneous orders sent the Nifty index tumbling nearly 16% in a matter of minutes.
According to Bloomberg, trading in the Nifty and some individual companies was stopped for 15 minutes at 9:49am Mumbai time after the erroneous orders wiped out $58 billion from the market.
Human error was to blame, not a faulty algorithm, for the guilty orders, which were entered by brokerage Emkay Global Financial Services for a client and caused the Nifty to fall nearly 900 points.
However, the Securities and Exchange Board of India has still begun a probe into whether adequate safeguard mechanisms were in place to avoid a 'flash crash' like situation, says the Economic Times.
The Indian episode follows a 28% hike in Kraft shares on US exchanges at the opening bell Thursday. The sharp hike in the share price has been attributed to a fat-finger error at an unidentified brokerage. Nasdaq, Nyse Arca Management, Bats and Direct Edge and other exchanges all cancelled trades in Kraft Foods Group executed between 9:30 a.m. and 9:31 a.m.