Today at about 1:09 PM the stock market, which had been having a bullish, happy day, suddenly fell sharply. Why? Because the Associated Press had issued a Tweet saying that the White House had been bombed and the President injured.
It immediately became obvious that the AP’s Twitter account had been hacked, and so the market rose again, just as sharply. The whole spasm lasted only a few minutes, during which time the Dow dipped and rebounded by about 140 points.
For anyone who knew what was happening, there was serious money to be made in that brief interval. I’m sure an awful lot of other people lost a great deal of money as automatic stop-loss orders kicked in.
I think we’ll be hearing a little more about this.