On: Berkshire Hathaway Down 99.5%

[klyrs]

Hilarious. I wonder how many bots have tried to take the bait

[jandrese → klyrs]

It wouldn't matter would it? The bot makes a whole lot of $1 bids and finds no sellers, life carries on.

For bots that might want to sell the stock this would likely be a large enough jump to trip a circuit breaker.

But really this was a display bug. It's possible some bot is still using 32 bit unsigned ints internally, but it would have to be pretty badly designed since this issue has been obvious and a long time coming.

[klyrs → jandrese]

Bot behavior under improbable scenarios is a function of its author's paranoia. I'm sure you're right about the vast majority of bots, but I'll be much more amused than surprised if it happens

[nrmitchi → klyrs]

  if $PRICE < 20% of $LAST_PRICE:
    # flash crash, don't be picky, time to make money!!
    submit_market_order()

Edit: Fixed formatting

[klyrs → nrmitchi]

Indent everything you want code-formatted. Lose the backticks, they're just noise

[nrmitchi → klyrs]

TIL. Thanks!

[weird-eye-issue → nrmitchi]

Yeah I can see nothing wrong with this except for stock splits, dividends, etc.

[stu2b50 → jandrese]

You don't even actually match up buyers and sellers on the public markets anymore for stocks. Individuals (from retail to institutional investors) buy and sell to market makers; later, when settling, market makers will pair up with brokers when clearing the funds.

So it'd be up to the market makers to not fuck up and sell at $1. If not, it's their liability.

[nunez → klyrs]

bad bots that don't have guards against bids that look too good to be true