According to the latest announcement released by Interactive Brokers on Wednesday local time, due to the technical malfunction in the New York Stock Exchange at the beginning of this month that caused the "Berkshire Zero-dollar Purchase Incident", which resulted in a loss of $48 million. The company is considering various measures to recover the funds, including possible legal action.

Interactive Brokers stated that it is considering all options, including filing a legal claim with the New York Stock Exchange. However, it also pointed out that these losses are not significant enough to have a substantial impact on the company's profits.

Late night on June 3 Beijing time, multiple US stocks, including Berkshire Hathaway class A shares, experienced abnormal market conditions, and the stock price of Berkshire Hathaway class A shares above $600,000 fell as much as 99.97% to $185.10, prompting the New York Stock Exchange to announce an emergency trading halt.

Berkshire Hathaway, which was almost a "zero-dollar purchase" at the time, quickly aroused the enthusiasm of many investors to buy cheap and set market orders in the hope of realizing the bottom fishing of Berkshire Hathaway after the resumption of trading.

A market order is an order that is executed at the current market price. However, a market order does not guarantee the execution price, especially in rapidly changing markets or inactive trading. A market order may be executed at a higher or lower price.

Interactive Brokers stated that the sharp drop in Berkshire Hathaway's stock price during the trading halt attracted a large number of buy orders, and many people "may hope that these orders will be executed at a price of about $185 per share when trading resumes."

However, the situation obviously did not turn out so well. Interactive Brokers stated that after trading was resumed, Berkshire Hathaway's stock price quickly soared to $741,941, resulting in Interactive Brokers' clients being executed at different prices, including some clients executed at the highest price.

After the close of trading on June 3, the New York Stock Exchange stated that for Berkshire Hathaway's class A shares, all transactions conducted between 9:50-9:51 local time below $603,718.3 are considered invalid. However, the losses suffered by many investors who executed high-priced orders after the resumption of trading were not retroactive.

Finally, Berkshire Hathaway Class A shares rose about 1% that day, and part of Interactive Brokers' clients' transaction prices were reportedly up to 20% above market price.

Interactive Brokers stated that based on the principle of providing convenience to clients, the brokerage firm took over most of the high-priced transactions through its platform and absorbed a large part of the price difference losses. They had protested to the New York Stock Exchange to cancel trading of Berkshire Hathaway Class A shares that became abnormally high under exceptional circumstances, but were rejected by the New York Stock Exchange.

It is reported that about 40 securities were affected by the June 3 event, including Barrick Gold Corporation and chain restaurants Chipotle. The New York Stock Exchange later stated that the incident was due to technical issues, which caused the limit-up and limit-down mechanisms to not work as expected, thereby affecting the normal display of stock prices.

Interactive Brokers' stock price was not affected by the above announcement overnight and rose by 0.73% at the close of trading, up about 48% this year.

It is worth mentioning that this is not the first time that Interactive Brokers has had to suffer losses due to unexpected events. In 2020, the brokerage firm suffered losses of up to $88 million due to the "negative oil price" in WTI crude oil futures contracts, and the company paid the margin owed to the clearing organization on behalf of clients involved in the erroneous transactions.