From The Evening Standard:
Share trades worth more than the size of Sweden’s economy had to be cancelled in Tokyo today after what is believed to be the biggest “raised middle finger” trades on record.
It is thought to be the most extreme example of a trader in financial markets inputting hopelessly wrong figures as way of telling his employer to f- off. The identity of the trader is not yet known.
Orders for shares in 42 major Japanese companies, including household names such as Toyota, Honda, Canon and Sony, totalling 67.78 trillion yen (£381 billion), were overturned, according to the Japan Securities Dealers Association. The biggest single order was for 1.96 billion shares in Toyota, the world’s biggest carmaker, worth 12.68 trillion yen (£71.4 billion).
Ayako Sera, a market strategist at Sumitomo Mitsui Trust Bank, told the Bloomberg financial news service: “I’ve never heard of orders this big being placed just for the sheer heck of it before.”
Gavin Parry, managing director at Hong Kong-based brokerage Parry International Trading, said: "It’s not rocket science that there was a raised middle finger here, but it reopens the questions of how much he'll have to put in the company swear box."