Small Mistakes That Cost Millions To Fix

A Stockbroker and His Counting Skills – $295 million

Back in 2005, one stockbroker would make one of the biggest mistakes of his career – all due to a typo! One trader at Mizuho Securities had attempted to sell his 610,000 shares at 1 yen. This is less than one penny. But what happened?

Well, the trader had accidentally swapped the digits round and was trying to sell one share at 610,000 yen. It turns out that transactions inputted into the Tokyo Stock Exchange are irreversible and so there was nothing he could do about it. It is estimated that the typo cost the company nearly $300 million.