Still doesn’t add up. According to the rumor, a trader at Citi mistakenly typed a “b” instead of an “m” - I’ve heard 6B, 16B and 15B. It’s also mixed up whether the context was $16B of shares or 16B total shares, but typically one sells a certain number of shares at a target price, not sell a certain $$ volume.
$16B represents about 10% of P&G’s total market cap. 16B shares represents over 300% of P&G’s total outstanding and over 100,000% of its daily average trading volume.
Huh? Someone accidentally puts in a trade selling 10% of all of P&G, and no person or QA or approval process asks if that’s what you really mean?
Today P&G plummeted by 25% before recovering to “just” a 2+% drop. 25% is dramatic, but it doesn’t seem like a very animated reaction from all those other P&G stockholders who just watched some fat cat insider run onto the trading floor with his hair on fire, selling about 10,000% - 100,000% above the daily average trading volume in a split second, while screamin OMG-run-for-the-hills-this-thing’s-gonna-blow-sky-high.
I agree the whole thing stinks. But it is beginning to sound like pure manipulation. CNBC is reporting odd trades on small stocks in both the NYSE and NASDAQ, That said it does make me wonder why the computer is not programmed to stop clearly out of range trades and next how often does this happen and we never hear about it?