The National Stock Exchange’s (NSE) derivatives segment witnessed a ‘fat finger’ trade on Thursday, June 2, which may have caused a loss of Rs 200-250 crore to an unknown broking house, thereby making it the biggest trading mistake that has ever been witnessed in India.
Fat finger trade is considered a mistaken action resulting from a mouse click or punching a wrong key. This can cause a huge loss for the initiating trader, while a massive gain for others.
As per a report by The Times of India, a trader sold 25,000 lots of Nifty call options at 14,500 strike at price as low as Re 0.15 at around 2.37 PM on Thursday. The market price for the contract at the time was about Rs 2,100. Since each lot of Nifty contract is for 50 numbers, the estimated loss incurred is somewhere between Rs 200-250 crore.
Due to this trade, two Kolkata-based traders are said to have made a windfall gain of about Rs 50 crore and Rs 25 crore, respectively, according to the report.
While NSE has not made any official comment yet, an exchange official told the publication that the trader who made this mistake had under all likelihood, an insurance to cover the losses.
In 2012, a trader at brokerage Emkay Global had a Rs 60-crore loss (approximately) due to pressing a wrong key for price and quantity in Nifty derivatives. Officials told the publication several broking houses had installed in-house systems after the 2012 NSE fiasco to identify and prevent such trades even before they are transmitted. Media reports state that the NSE too was to put an alert system to prevent and neutralize fat finger trades. However, as per an investment adviser, no such system kicked in on Thursday, the TOI report said.