Topline
A glitch caused trading websites to display a near 100% loss for Berkshire Hathaway shares for much of Monday morning, falsely suggesting the conglomerate helmed by billionaire investor Warren Buffett went from a market capitalization of almost $900 billion to below $1 billion—but the error was later fixed.
Berkshire Hathaway, the conglomerate helmed by billionaire Warren Buffett, did not in fact lose … [+]
Key Facts
The erroneous share price and halting of trading was due to a since-resolved “technical issue,” according to a New York Stock Exchange spokesperson, who attributed the problem to inaccurate real-time share price information provided by the modern-day ticker tape provider Consolidated Trade Association, automatically triggering a limit up-limit down pause that occurs when stocks trade outside of a normal bound.
The error caused trading platforms and websites to incorrectly display a 99.97% loss for Class A shares of Berkshire, whose less expensive “baby Berkshire” Class B shares were down a far more palatable 1% as its big brother was halted.
Other stocks halted due to the error included Chipotle and GameStop and AMC, the latter two of whom were involved in the recent meme stock frenzy.
Berkshire stock resumed trading at 11:35 a.m. ET after a nearly two-hour pause.
The cause of the glitch is not yet known, but a spokesperson for the NYSE told the Financial Times the exchange does not suspect a cyber attack.
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Key Background
Monday morning’s blip displayed Berkshire’s Class A’s share price at $185.10, which would have been its lowest level since 1979, according to FactSet, a fraction of its actual $635,000 share price. Forbes’ real-time billionaires tracker briefly showed Buffett, who is the seventh-richest person in the world, as losing $136 billion on Monday, knocking out almost all of his fortune. A majority of Buffett’s fortune is thanks to his roughly 15% stake in Berkshire, whose holdings include subsidiaries like GEICO and sizable investments in companies like Apple.