OT ... Caxton, "A slip of the finger led Bear Stearns Cos. Inc. on Wednesday to erroneously enter an order to sell $4 billion worth of stocks [...] should have been entered as $4 million [...]"
LOL. The finger? Must have been one of those "hunt & peckers". Most people type 'B' with their left hand and 'M' with their right.
Actually, truth be told, the order was entered $4MM. Everybody was confused .. even the computers.
Is that 'M' the Roman numeral for 1,000? You know, like in the stone age .. when "MM" meant 1,000 times 1,000 .. which, even waaaay back then .. calculated to 1,000,000.
Or does that 'M' stand for a million? That would be a million times a million .. which calculates to a trillion. A trillion? That's just too darn big. NOBODY orders a trillion dollars of stock.
Maybe the first 'M' is the Roman numeral for 1,000 and the other stands for 1,000,000. Yeh, that's it! A thousand times a million equals one billion. That makes a lot more sense than a trillion. (A million makes a lot more sense than a billion, you say? Never mind!! It's my story.)
Geez! I hope nobody ever sends me a stock order for $4BB. 'B' is not a Roman numeral .. so I would have to interpret that as a billion times a billion. Now that's BBIIIIIG. :O)
Ron |
