Buffett's company's stock price plunged, netizens exclaimed "buy the dip", some bought at $185 per share

On the evening of June 3rd Beijing time, a technical glitch on the New York Stock Exchange caused Berkshire Hathaway's stock price to plummet by nearly 100%, briefly dropping from $620,000 per share to $185.1 per share, almost a 0% drop.

Unexpectedly, someone accidentally "bought the dip" at $185.1 per share, purchasing 51 shares, with the largest single transaction being 8 shares. This means that once the trades are executed and the glitch is fixed, the value of each share in this person's hands will instantly increase by over 3400 times. Netizens are speculating on who the lucky buyer is and who the unlucky seller might be.

In response, some netizens commented: "If you had invested $1,000 in Berkshire Hathaway this morning, you would now have $3.5 million. This was caused by a system glitch. It has been fixed now. I just realized this."

Is there really such a "laying profit" opportunity?

In response, the New York Stock Exchange later announced that it has decided to "cancel all erroneous Berkshire individual stock trades caused by technical issues between 9:50 am and 9:51 am Eastern Time, related to the 'CTA SIP' system issue, and any trades with prices lower than or equal to $603,718.30. Additionally, the exchange made it clear that traders have no right to appeal this decision and hinted at the possibility of canceling trades of other individual stocks.

Nevertheless, the market still reacted strongly to this rare event. Some domestic media mentioned that market participants have noticed this super bug, with Lin Yi, a market participant, stating that trades significantly below the normal stock price should be considered normal trades technically. Stock price bugs may prompt quantitative funds to sell directly, something regular investors wouldn't do at such low prices.

Such technical issues are not unprecedented in the history of exchanges and can usually be attributed to several main reasons: data errors, algorithmic trading errors, system upgrades or maintenance issues, flash crashes, and network attacks, among others. These factors can lead to brief data or trading anomalies on the exchange. There are no shortcuts to achieving perfection.

For example, in the summer of 2012, Knight Capital Group suffered a massive loss of $400 million in just 45 minutes due to a software error, leading the firm from a Wall Street giant to bankruptcy; on May 6, 2010, the Dow Jones Industrial Average experienced an instant crash due to high-frequency trading and insufficient market liquidity, causing the index to plummet over 600 points in 5 minutes.

Furthermore, exchanges may experience trading functionality failures or data errors due to unexpected issues during system upgrades or maintenance periods. For instance, on August 22, 2013, the NASDAQ exchange underwent a major technical glitch, resulting in a trading halt for nearly three hours This suspension has affected thousands of stocks and options, including the trading of shares of major tech companies such as Apple, Google, Microsoft, etc. The technical issue is believed to have been caused by a malfunction during the exchange's system upgrade, particularly in the part related to its price quotation distribution system.

The swift response and subsequent rulings by the NYSE effectively contained the impact of this technical glitch. However, this event still had a certain impact on the confidence of market participants, once again highlighting the market's concern about the potential risks of modern trading systems