Today in the markets

started normal, and so did my day. I arrived to work, checked emails, did work stuff. Went to Rotaract meeting during lunch and thoroughly enjoyed listening to Paul Finebaum speak to our group. la di da da. Arrive back at work, BAM, market down 300 pnts. Wow, this is not good. 30 sec walk to my office, pull up computer, market down 900. WHAT?!? System crashes, I cant even tell what the market's doing. not good at all. Frantic call to my business partner, no answer, He's already on the phone with clients. I finally get my market site working, only to realize we are now only down 450. Better, but still not good. I coincidently then have a meeting with my biggest clients, where we spend most of the time just sitting and watching this mess unfold. All of a sudden, its market close. Fancy men in suites ring the closing bell and clap. Today the clapping wasnt because they were big wigs making tons of money, it was thanking god no more trading could happen. Its days like this when I think i need blood pressure medication. Now, its 3:30, the market has been closed for 30 mins, and a news story erupts straight from Hollywood. Apparently, this sell off might have occurred because a trader at Citigroup typed a "b" for billion, instead of a "m" for million when selling shares of Proctor and Gamble stock. (otherwise known as the main plot from the movie Wall Street, see below) WHAT? A trader error caused the biggest sale off of the year, resulting in past 5 months of gains being lost in 15 minutes. How does that happen? I'm not sure it even did. I trade daily, and never do I make stock trades in alpha form. You trade using numerics. One billion shares= 1,000,000,000, not 1b. Unless their brokerage platform is just different than normal, i dont see that being the reason. Then what? Greece? Oil spill? Birmingham hitting 90 degrees? This time, I dont think anyone knows. Lets hope the market behaves itself tomorrow, it is Friday for goodness sake. Time to decompress. Enjoy Michael Douglas below, he did win an Oscar for this performance...

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 WALL STREET 2: Money Never Sleeps