You know it’s been a bad day at the office when a typo costs your company over 27 billion yen, which equates to a cool $225 million.
Here’s what happened. A Mizuho Securities trader (ex-trader?) wanted to sell one (1) share of J-Com Co. on Thursday morning at 610,000 yen. However, the trader typed the trade in to sell 610,000 shares at 1 yen. Although J-Com was debuting on the Tokyo Exchange with approximately 15,000 shares being offered, the Tokyo Exchange went ahead and processed the sale of J-Com, even though the sale was approximately 41 times the number of outstanding shares. The parent company of Mizuho Securities (Japan’s second largest bank) publicly stated that it would fully back the losses from the erroneous trade (how’s that for a cost of doing business?), which could wipe out Mizuho Securities’ first quarter profit of 28 billion yen (or $233 million). The Times Online article on the trade is here.
And lest we think that only anonymous traders make mistakes, this Andy Kessler/Wall Street Journal ($) piece reminds us that even the Oracle of Omaha is not infallible:

Shrines to Warren Buffett now outnumber Elvis altars. Which makes the Oracle of Omaha’s very public bet against the dollar going into this year even more painful for his copycats. Berkshire put on $21 billion in contracts with a value of $1.8 billion and cited “deep-rooted structural problems” and the need for changes in trade policy and dollar declines. With the dollar up 16% against the euro and yen, the investment was down $897 million as of October. So was his stock, until he was bailed out by three gals, Katrina, Rita and Wilma, who popped insurance rates. Can he repeat that little trick next year?