given a distorted picture of the market.

Three mistakes occurred in one week, one putting the BSX index out by 100 points, one reporting Bank of Bermuda's market capitalisation as being over $6 billion instead of $600 million and another figure reported trade on the exchange as being $18 million more than actually happened.

The index mistake was put down to human error by a spokeswoman for the BSX yesterday. She said the mistake had been made while calculating Bank of Bermuda Warrants which were exchanged for common shares after they expired in January. Last year the BSX was hit by a Y2K glitch when the dates of warrants were not recognised by the system as 2000, and clicked round to 1900.

BSX management announced publicly on Monday that there had been an error in the index. The BSX spokeswoman announced the index had been 100 points out for three days.

The spokeswoman said: "Contrary to previous reports as of Wednesday 5th July, the index stood at 1,592.12 and as of Friday, 14th of July 1,692.13. The change is as a result of an error in recent index maintenance involving a technical adjustment relating to the exercise of Bank of Bermuda Warrants earlier this month.'' On July 7 the Bermuda Stock Exchange reported a rise in the index of 176.92 points. 96.39 points were at the time attributed to a rise in the price of stock, specifically Bank of Bermuda, and the rest to adjustments made by the BSX to the number of outstanding shares due mostly to the Bank of Bermuda's Millennium Warrants. The BSX said at the time that outstanding shares volumes were adjusted on a six monthly basis.

The report last week stated: "Normally such adjustments have little impact on the Index, however in this period there was a substantial rise in the number of outstanding shares in the Bank of Bermuda due for the most part to the bank's Millennium Warrants being exercised.'' On the same day, July 7, the BSX reported the Bank of Bermuda's market capitalisation as being over $6 billion. It should have read at over $600 million.

And on the same day an error reported $18.2 million worth of trade on the exchange -- when it should have read $126,990.