Comment Pennies are a hidden-in-plain-sight “y2k&rdq (Score 1) 509
There’s a huge Y2K-like problem hiding in plain sight here.
When the stock market switched from fractions to decimals, there were years of advanced preparation. And I was initially switched to trading in five cent in increments and then later in pennies. Low price stocks now trade in even smaller increments.
Now, presumably, this change won’t affect the stock market. It’s only about physical issuance of pennies. I mentioned the stock market change from fractions to decimals only to point out. The amount of preparation needed to pull off a change like this.
Y2K was real, but disaster was avoided. I’m a software engineer and everyone I knew back then was doing Y2K projects. I was doing an ETL project merging data from five different medical claim systems (the company had gone on a merger binge) none of which were Y2K compliant - to one that was. Now merging those systems was an efficiency that needed to eventually be put in place, but Y2K lit a fire under that project.
I wonder what all of the unintended consequences of this sudden change that hasn’t been thought-out?
I guess we’re gonna have to bring in a whole bunch of H-1B workers to get the rounding issues sorted