The
tweet went out to the AP's 1.9 million followers.
A fake
news agency tweet about explosions at the White House injuring President Obama
sent markets into a tailspin which was quickly reversed when it was proven
false.
@AP, the official twitter handle
of the respected Associated Press news agency, sent out a message at about 1:07
p.m. ET, saying "Breaking: Two Explosions in the White House and Barack
Obama is Injured." The AP quickly said it was hacked.
White House Press Secretary Jay
Carney said, "the President is fine" despite what the hacked Twitter
feed said.
However, the market impact was already intense. On the
floor at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, traders quickly traded on the tweet,
selling S&P futures and buying Treasury 10-year futures.
For several minutes, the floor was a flurry of activity, as it was in trading rooms across Wall Street, until the Associated Press tweeted that its account had been hacked. The Dow plunged more than 140 points and bond yields snapped lower. Within six minutes, the Dow recovered its losses in a roller coaster ride.
For several minutes, the floor was a flurry of activity, as it was in trading rooms across Wall Street, until the Associated Press tweeted that its account had been hacked. The Dow plunged more than 140 points and bond yields snapped lower. Within six minutes, the Dow recovered its losses in a roller coaster ride.
"You wonder who did it and
whether it was done on purpose. It certainly was an instant implosion,"
said Art Cashin, of UBS, who watched the minutes of bedlam on the floor of the
NYSE.
Cashin said the reaction was
especially dramatic because it said the president was injured.
(The surprise drop was good for me though. The automated trading system I've developed over last 15 years of my trading SPI and S&P futures had sold just one contract of S&P 500 at the beginning of the drop and bought back and reversed the positions right at the bottom of the drop. So I made 20 big S&P 500 points i.e. US$500 profit for just 6-7 minutes of work.)
 |
| S&P 500 dropped massive 20 points in just 3 minutes at NYSE. But the Index immediately recovered once the AP issued the statement that the AP Tweet was bogus. |
