How a Twitter Hack Crippled the Stock Market
The Dow Jones Industrial Average recently dropped by about 145 points and the S&P 500 index lost $136.5 billion dollars in value after a tweet from the Associated Press claimed that an explosion had taken place in the White House and that President Obama was injured. The tweet turned out to be false and stemmed from a hacked Associated Press Twitter account. The precedent has been set for us to take a long, hard and uncomfortable look at the challenges we face when relying on automated trading systems that gauge and react to public sentiment and that end with drastic results.