mistake sees qbe fall off asx200

By a staff reporter

Australian stocks suddenly turned negative this afternoon after an error in a sell order slugged QBE Insurance's shares, temporarily removing it from the ASX-200 index.

ASX spokesman Matthew Gibbs said a mistake by a broker saw 370,000 QBE shares sold at 1/10th of a cent.

"Because the price error was so drastic it effectively removed the stock from the index and hence the sudden drop in the index," Mr Gibbs said.

He said incidents like this happened from "time to time" and were mainly due to human error.

QBE was placed into a "trading pause" whilst the ASX convened a governor's dispute committee meeting, which includes a number of market participants and a representative from ASX.

It was decided at the meeting that the trade was an anomaly and cancelled all trades in QBE that were below $22.20.

QBE has since resumed trading and at 1536 AEST the stocks was up 2.83 per cent at $22.93.

Mr Gibbs said the whole process took ASX around "five to seven minutes" to rectify.

"It has to happen quickly because it's a real time incident," he said.