Text vs numbers — CCA-F Exam Prep

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REAL STORY A massive Excel spreadsheet on a trading floor monitor. One column is highlighted in yellow — it's labeled 'Risk Value' but the cells are formatted as text (left-aligned) instead of numbers (right-aligned). A trader squints at it. JP Morgan logo visible. Dark, tense office.

A spreadsheet column at JP Morgan looked perfectly normal. Every cell showed a number. The column was formatted as text.

The risk model read that column every day, treated the 'numbers' as labels, ignored them in calculations, and used fallback values instead. For months, it underestimated the bank's exposure. By the time humans noticed, the loss was $6.2 billion.