Apple shares dropped sharply just a few minutes ago, falling a whopping 9.4% and hitting a low of $542.80.
Shares were halted after hitting a single-stock circuit breaker.
Looks like a fat-finger trade, but no conclusive evidence yet. We’ll check back shortly.
UPDATE: Apple shares just resumed trading and are currently down 0.3% at $597.58. The stock was halted for five minutes from 10:57 a.m. Eastern Time to 11:02.
2nd UPDATE: It appears a bad trade triggered the halt. Stocks are halted if they swing more than 10% in a span of five minutes. This allows market participants time to regroup and to prevent further erroneous trades from undermining the market.
3rd UPDATE: According to FactSet, at 10:57:28, orders placed through the BATS Global Markets came in well below where Apple had previously been trading. Orders first came in at $551.66 and microseconds later went as low as $542.80 before the stock was halted.
To be sure, there were just a couple hundred shares traded at these levels.
Still, the issue occurs as BATS is having troubles of its own. Here’s what colleague David Benoit at Deal Journal reported:
BATS has an alert on its website that it is “actively investigating an issue.” The exchange issued an alert at 10:48 a.m. that there were “system issues in symbols range A through BF.”
4th UPDATE: CNBC is now reporting that Nasdaq is canceling the erroneous Apple trades made on the BATS exchange.
http://blogs.wsj.com/marketbeat/2012/03/23/uh-oh-apple-shares-halted-single-stock-circuit-breaker-triggered/?mod=yahoo_hs
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