May. 7th, 2010

Woah

May. 7th, 2010 04:26 pm
sub_divided: cos it gets me through, hope you never stop (Default)
Did you know that the DOW dropped 1,000 points yesterday?

Wall Street Journal comments from Thursday

Wall Street Journal comments from today

Crazy.

From the articles and comments, this was either caused by fears over Greece defaulting on debt, or by a trader at Citibank typing "b" instead of "m", or by insiders taking advantage of automated processes to manipulate the markets, or by Obama's health care bill and the US National Debt (what?).

My limited, second-hand experience with computer trading is that a lot of algorhythms are actually very simple, brute-force things designed to e.g. sell a certain number of stocks wherever they'll get the best price. Maybe there was no "don't sell if the price falls below x" safeguard built in.

Selected Comments )

And, finally:

This is going to be another pump on the bicycle pedal towards a double dip recession. If you think people are going to ignore news like this and run out to Macy's you need your head examined.


Actually I was planning to head over to Macy's after work, since there's a 60% Off Mother's Day Sale going on right now.

March 2022

S M T W T F S
  12345
67 89101112
13141516171819
20212223242526
2728293031  

Most Popular Tags

Page Summary

Style Credit

  • Style: (No Theme) for Transmogrified by Yvonne

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags