A Citigroup, Inc (NYSE: C) spokesman said on Thursday that it is investigating a rumor that one of its traders helped cause a drop of nearly 1,000 points in the Dow Jones Industrial Average by entering an erroneous trade.
The New York-based bank said that it currently doesn’t have any evidence that a trade may have been made in error, however Reuters recently reported that the DJIA’s largest intraday point drop ever may have been made by an erroneous trade entered in by a person at a major wall street bank.
Sources said the erroneous trade might have involved shares of what’s referred to as “E-Mini”, a stock market index future contract that trade on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange’s Globex trading platform. E-Mini’s compensation is similar of that to the S&P 500. A spokesman for CME said that it hasn’t found any problems with its issues.
During the short lived-sell off Procter and Gamble shares dropped by nearly 37% to $39.37 at 2:47 p.m. EDT, causing the company to investigate whether any trades have been made in error. The shares are listed on the NYSE, but the lower price was recorded on a different electronic trading venue.
“We don’t know what caused it,” said Procter & Gamble spokeswoman Jennifer Chelune. “We know that that was an electronic trade … and we’re looking into it with Nasdaq and the other major electronic exchanges.”
