Berkshire Hathaway’s Stock Price Is Too Much for Computers
Berkshire Hathaway Inc. is trading at more than $421,000 per Class A share, and the market is optimistic. That’s a problem.
The price has grown so high, it has nearly hit the maximum number that can be stored in one common way exchange computers handle digits.
On Tuesday, Nasdaq Inc. temporarily suspended broadcasting prices for Class A shares of Berkshire over several popular data feeds. Such feeds provide real-time price updates for a number of online brokerages and finance websites.
Nasdaq’s computers can only count so high because of the compact digital format they use for communicating prices. The biggest number they can handle is $429,496.7295. Nasdaq is rushing to finish an upgrade later this month that would fix the problem.
It isn’t just Nasdaq. Another exchange operator, IEX Group Inc., said in March that it would stop accepting investors’ orders in Class A shares of Berkshire Hathaway “due to an internal price limitation within the trading system.”
