The shock and sell-off that followed caused Knight Capital's stock to lose 75 percent of its value in two business days. The loss of liquidity was so great that Knight Capital needed to talk on an addition $400 million line of credit, which, according to the , effectively shifted control of the company from the management group to its new creditors.

Knight Capital was regulated by the Securities and Exchange Commission, routinely audited and PCI complaint. If that bug could affect Knight, it could happen to any company. At least that's what Knight Capital CEO Thomas Joyce seemed to imply in an interview with . "Technology breaks. It ain't good. We don't look forward to it," he says, adding, "It was a software bug....It happened to be a very large software bug."

"Technology breaks. It ain't good. We don't look forward to it," Knight Capital CEO Thomas Joyce says. (Image courtesy of )

This incident wasn't the first of its kind. In 2010, something caused the Dow Jones Industrial Average to drop 600 points in roughly five minutes in what is now known as the " ." Nasdaq blamed the disastrous on a similar technical glitch.