Apple shares sent tumbling after trading glitch BATS Global Markets' first full day as a listed company was blighted by an embarrassing malfunction, which some sources said was a technical problem and others blamed on a "fat finger error." Having floated on Thursday at $16 a share in a $100m fund-raising, BATS shares fell to $15.25 this morning. The UK and US markets operator was the first exchange to go public in two years. However, BATS' debut was overshadowed after it erroneously recorded a huge drop in Apple shares in a matter of seconds. At 10.57 New York time, a single trade of 100 shares in the technology giant was executed at $542.80, coming from the BATS Exchange. The previous transaction, seconds earlier, had been at $598.26 per share. The discrepency triggered a stock circuit breaker rule and halted trading for around five minutes. Minutes before the problem trade, BATS sent an alert advising users that it was investigating "system issues." However, Joe Terranova, chief market strategist at Virtus Investment Partners, said: "It looks like a fat finger mistake." BATS was forced to declare "self-help," the signal for an exchange dealing with internal problems which needs to send trades through other venues. Hundreds of trades were later cancelled by Nasdaq. BATS was established in 2005 by major banks and trading firms looking to break Nasdaq and NYSE's stranglehold on US trading.