Schadenfreude.
What a beautiful word, it is German and means taking delight in someone else’s misery. As when some twit passes you on the interstate going about twenty over the speed limit and you mutter to yourself damn, where are the cops when you need them, and then over the next hill the guy is pulled over, and you pass by smiling broadly to yourself.
Exchange-traded warrants are complicated. There is an offer price, then after a period of time there is a settlement price depending on a formula. The biggest market for these things is Hong Kong where over $500 billion were traded last year.
Goldman Sachs (“too big to failâ€, made millions when US economy imploded in 2008) is one of the major players in the Hong Kong market. They recently offered a product where in the prospectus the formula had a typo, where there should have been the divide symbol was the multiply symbol.
Oops.
The mistake meant that the offer price from Goldman was ridiculously low. Just after the opening of trading, the exchange began receiving complaints from traders who wanted to buy in. By mid-morning, with prices spiking and after a request from Goldman, the exchange suspended trading.
Of course now the lawyers are involved, but Goldman Sachs might be out somewhere around $50 million. It couldn’t happen to a nicer group of guys.
More is in the link below:
Stick to local news. The further you venture off the reservation, the less interesting you are.
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