“Fat finger dialing” is when a large finger accidentally hits an extra or a wrong number. A sudden drop in the stock market in May 2010 was initially attributed to a “fat finger trade”—an erroneous trade that, for example, mistakes $10,000 for $10.
 
The price of gold dropped suddenly in December 2013. The blog Zero Hedge explained the drop in a January 2014 headline:
 
“Proof Gold’s Latest Slam Was Not A ‘Fat Goldfinger.’”
     
The term “fat goldfinger” (fat finger + gold) is also a pun on the James Bond movie Goldfinger (1964). “Fat ‘goldfingers’” was also cited in print on December 21, 2012.
 
     
Kitco Forums
Numisgold
12-21-2012, 11:02 PM
In reviewing the end of day closes there are some real strange volume patterns in the juniors. GPL and others mentioned above had massive volume in the last 5-15 min of trading. Almost 600K GPL shares in the last 5 minutes of trading knocking the price instantly down to $1.45. It’s as if they ran all the nearby stops. Same action occurred in 6-10 other juniors as well (THM, AZK, PZG, GSS, etc.) Not sure what was going on. Either a junior fund dumping in mass because of something bad coming next week…or a market maker running all the stops to buy ‘em all cheap. GSS was hammered at the close with 1.5 MILL shares sold in the last 5 min. The amount of volume in those 5-15 min was in some cases on the order of an entire normal week’s volume. I’m befuddled as to what’s going on and what’s coming at us next week. Sort of reminds me of the massive Nugt volume on August 1st when someone ran all the stops and nullified a week’s worth of gains in one morning. Fat “goldfingers” or something else?
 
Zero Hedge
Proof Gold’s Latest Slam Was Not A “Fat Goldfinger”
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 01/08/2014 15:50 -0500
With December’s “fat finger” in US Treasury Futures proved as nothing but an HFT algo gone wild, Nanex has turned its deep-thought to the recent halt in gold futures markets. Their conclusion, this was not the result of a fat finger, but rather the work of a high frequency trading algorithm that would pause, and (probably) test the market before continuing. A fat finger would not have had such distinguishing features.
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COMMENTS
mickeyman
Wed, 01/08/2014 - 16:13
Goldthumber