could this be why it jumped?

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    http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/markets/bad-data-blamed-for-asx-flash-spike/story-e6frg916-1225885276740

    THE manager of sharemarket indices said wrong price data on a single stock had caused the ASX 200 to incorrectly jump 500 points today.
    Standard & Poor's, which manages the indices, confirmed that just after 10.13am AEST the indices showed incorrect levels, after it received "erroneous prices" from its data provider.

    The incident lasted only "one tick," S&P said in a statement.

    The problem was immediately identified and resolved by 10:14am, S&P said.

    A market source told The Australian online that every 30 seconds the price data used to calculate the S&P indices were updated.

    The incident sent the benchmark S&P/ASX 200 index soaring more than 500 points, or 13.6 per cent, to within a whisker of a 52-week high. The broader All Ordinaries was also affected, along with six other indices.


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    S&P said the wrong data related to one stock, but declined to name the stock and its data provider.

    The incident revived memories of a spectacular near 1000-point intraday drop on May 6 on Wall Street's Dow Jones Industrial Average. The sudden and sharp move down was dubbed the "flash crash" by some traders.

    ASX spokesperson Matthew Gibbs said no trades were affected and the Sydney Futures Exchange SPI 200 futures contract was also unaffected.

    "It was some erroneous prices that S&P received, it didn't affect any trades but it did cause a very sharp spike in the price of the index," he said.

    "It was unrelated to trading, it was the price of the index."

    US authorities are yet to get to the exact cause of the May 6 incident, which was originally widely reported to have been caused by a ?fat finger? error from a trader.

    Heavy trading volume may have also led a large trader's computer algorithm to execute a larger sell order than it would on other days, regulators have said.

    The Securities and Exchange Commission has since proposed new circuit breakers that would halt trading in individual stocks if they fall sharply in a short period.

    Today's incident caused the S&P/ASX 200's range to blow out from a low of 4379 to a high of 5012.8, according to some screens that were yet to show the correct levels, after closing at 4413 on Friday.

 
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