I agree. Go to the media. They love stories of the "little guy" getting screwed. As well they should. Why should we bail out the computer programs (which were obviously the only ones selling down there)? It's their program that screwed up, they should be forced to pay the consequences.
What no one was willing to provide a bid and someone needed cash fast and he provided quick cash now no questions asked. No one put a gun to the head of the person who filled his order.
I'm not talking about his situation, but about trade busts as a policy. Trade busts by definition must impose an arbitrary cut off price below which busts occur and above which they don't. There is no logical reason why someone who bought 1 tick below this price should be shafted and someone who bought 1 tick above it shouldn't. This guy could just as easily have bought a micro-cap down 61%, and who is to say that stock should not trade there during a market crash? Stocks have gapped down 60%+ on surprise bad news before. Furthermore, fear of trade busts is exactly why those stocks traded at silly prices like $0.20 or 0.01. No one would bid at $1, $2, $3 because if they are right the trade gets busted, and if they are wrong (e.g company bankruptcy/accounting fraud) they get stuck with the trade and lose. Heads they lose tails the other guys win. It is not proper to bust a trade, because someone took risk in buying it and they deserve some compensation for taking that risk (as opposed to actually LOSING money for providing liquidity and taking risk). Price adjustment to a reasonable low of the day, filling all buyers below that price at this new adjusted low, still prevents the seller getting unfairly raped, whilst giving them some punishment to disincentivize future stupid sales/errors, and giving the buyer some reward for taking risk and providing liquidity. It has no downsides and multiple upsides compared to just flat-out arbitrary trade busts below a cut-off.
Please forgive my obvious ignorance, but I am confused. Does the person who sold PG at $1 get their shares back from the person who bought PG at $1 and got their trade busted? If not, who makes the $59 per share profit on PG? I noticed on my charting software that the stocks that went down to $0.01 no longer are shown as having done so. For example, the low of PG on May 6 is now officially $47 and the low for ACN is now $38.75. There is now no historical proof that these stocks went down to a penny a share on that date. What gives the exchanges the legal right to bust these trades? If the sell-off occurred as a result of programmed trading, it was not a mistake and it seems to me that the trades should be honored.
I am appalled by so many people think this is just tough luck. No, it is not, it is illegal. How can they bust a trade? Trade was made, it was a done deal....... Think about this, guys, if NASDAQ can do whatever they want, they may some day take your money away simply because you have made money.
I'd love to read a logical answer to your post. No proof that the shares went to .01 when they were at .01 for a short time???? WOW!!!! Astonishing! What are the exchanges going to say? "It never 'really' did that?" Unreal! On another note, a quick lookup on google finance shows price going to .01: http://www.google.com/finance?q=acn Heres PG: http://www.google.com/finance?q=pg
Anyone with any trading experience knows when stocks are trading completely out of whack without any news it's very possible for those trades to be busted. When a stock like that goes to 20 cents on no news it's almost a lock that it will be busted so it's 100% your fault for selling your long before a decision was made on the busts, if you didn't know about this possible scenario then you need to learn more about the markets before trading again and if you did know of this possible scenario then you have nothing to complain about.