Computer glitch suppressed gold price since 1995

From Rooters
Tuesday, February 27, 2007

http://www.reuters.com/article/oddlyenoughnews/idUSL2724139820070227

NEW YORK -- A computer glitch has been understating the price of gold by thousands of dollars per ounce since 1995, the New York Mercantile Exchange announced today in a statement on behalf of its Comex division.

A price-monitoring program installed at the Comex that year somehow has been registering only half the buy orders for gold while doubling the sell orders, the exchange said. As a result, the exchange said, the closing gold price reported daily has been understated by about $800 per year cumulatively and gold will open Wednesday not at Tuesday's listed closing price of $666.30 but at $9,663.30.

The exchange said that traders who believe that they have lost money since 1995 because of the computer glitch should refer to the "force majeure" section of their exchange contracts, which exempts the exchange from responsibility for computer programming errors.

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