{"id":32401,"date":"2021-05-06T16:53:40","date_gmt":"2021-05-06T20:53:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=32401"},"modified":"2021-05-06T16:53:40","modified_gmt":"2021-05-06T20:53:40","slug":"buffet-overflow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2021\/05\/06\/buffet-overflow\/","title":{"rendered":"Buffet Overflow"},"content":{"rendered":"

Alexander Osipovich<\/a> (via Hacker News<\/a>):<\/p>\n

Berkshire Hathaway Inc. is trading at more than $421,000 per Class A share, and the market is optimistic. That’s a problem.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

John Gruber<\/a> (Hacker News<\/a>):<\/p>\n

Worth noting that they’re not using integers to store fractional values — what they’re doing is using 10,000ths of a dollar as their integral unit. The decimal gets shifted left by four digits simply to display prices as dollar values, but the math is all done in 10,000ths of a dollar units.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

Previously:<\/p>\n