Working on the repo desk of a large Japanese bank in New York in the 90’s. There was a big (both in font size and magnitude) number that was on the upper left of the blotter system that ran on every traders desk, which represented the total we had to borrow that day to fund the banks trading book. There would be a number below it which would represent how much we had borrowed so far.
It was “too important to automate” so a trading assistant keyed it in every morning. One morning he typed the wrong number and the mistake was in the billions digit.
At 2:45 “the cage” called the repo desk and said “You know you guys are still short a billion, right?”
There was then a flurry of activity as traders got on the phone to try to borrow a billion dollars in in fifteen minutes, while also trying to not let on we were kind of over a barrel. The head of fixed income prepared his explanation to the Fed about why we needed to borrow a few hundred million overnight.
The number got automated in our next release, and the open procedure was changed to the trading assistant verifying the number against the “cage” report.
It was “too important to automate” so a trading assistant keyed it in every morning. One morning he typed the wrong number and the mistake was in the billions digit.
At 2:45 “the cage” called the repo desk and said “You know you guys are still short a billion, right?”
There was then a flurry of activity as traders got on the phone to try to borrow a billion dollars in in fifteen minutes, while also trying to not let on we were kind of over a barrel. The head of fixed income prepared his explanation to the Fed about why we needed to borrow a few hundred million overnight.
The number got automated in our next release, and the open procedure was changed to the trading assistant verifying the number against the “cage” report.