Thursday, April 25, 2013
How to make a fortune short-selling
A hacker got into the AP's Twitter account and spread a false story that the White House had been bombed. The stock market took an immediate 100 point dive. It picked up again very quickly, of course...but during that brief period, a short seller could have made a fortune.
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3 comments:
Unfortunately(?) terrorists are generally too stupid to profit from their attacks. Unlike organised crime. After all, who's to say it was terrorists who posted that tweet? What happened with that 9/11 insider trading thing?
And probably did!
I saw the graph long before I heard about the hoax [actually read about it on riverdaughter's site]. I immediately assumed it was a glitch [intended or not] in the computer-driven, high-frequency trading. We had a flash crash before. It's my understanding that the algorithms are designed to react to certain words and phrases. A way to start a chaos wave? The WH being attacked and POTUS injured sounds like a good place to start.
Still living in interesting times!
Peggysue
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