I love automated systems

[andrewducker]

For some reason, the South Florida Sun-Sentine's readers voted up an old story about United Airlines being on the brink of bankruptcy.  Could be any reason from deliberate stock manipulation to a bunch of high-schoolers reading it as part of a class.

This causes Google's newsbots to spot it.  The article didn't have a date.  So it got taken as new news, and ended up on Google News as if it was from today.

Other news aggregators picked it up from there.

Automated stock trading programs dumped stock.

Which plummeted from $12 to $3 - wiping out 1.14 billion dollars.

I'm highly amused, and unsure if anything could be done about it.  I guess it's just one of those things that happens.

I got it from the /. article here - which got it from the Wall Street Journal, which for some reason isn't letting me in right now.

Comments

[bracknellexile.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure if that's really really funny or really really scary.

[andrewducker]

_and_

[drplokta]

I suspect you'll find something's already been done about it. The next time something similar happens, people will be much more alert to the massive buying opportunity provided by the idiots who are selling, which will stop the price from dropping very much.

[andrewducker]

I'm sure it will - there'll be people out there acting as factcheckers, I'm sure. Being first with the _right_ information is how to make money after all.

Of course, if the price doesn't drop by much then there's not much money to be made.

[zz]

but presumably there's a very limited amount of time to fact-check before the market passes you by in these sorts of situations?

i've always quite fancied trying to write a trading program and at least seeing if i could get it to make money, although not actually trading with it would affect the results..

[pigeonhed.livejournal.com]

I'm not so sure. Rumour, misinformation and error have been causes of so many Stock Market crises over the years that you'd think they'd learn.

[lizzie-and-ari.livejournal.com]

How is this not bigger news?

[pseudomonas.livejournal.com]

Thing is, if it got to be an Bloomberg newsflash, it'd have had that effect whether the systems were automated or just very fast-moving people. Oops all round, though!

[ashfae.livejournal.com]

Well that's scary and hilarious.

[meico.livejournal.com]

I'm highly amused, and unsure if anything could be done about it. I guess it's just one of those things that happens.

Well, making stock markets less volatile and encouraging actual investment instead of just allowing it to be a numbers game might help. There's a cute little thing (that unfortunately doesn't quite work as designed) which I like to call the "anti-speculation tax", most know it better as the "capital gains tax"...