Automated Google News Crawling Error Evaporates $1.14 Billion

Mr. Analog · September 10, 2008, 02:49:56 PM

United Airlines got a shock Monday when their stock went from $12 to $3 due to an error in a Google News feeder.

Quote"The Wall Street Journal reports that Google News crawled an obscure reprint of an article from 2002 when United Airlines was on the brink of bankruptcy. United Airlines has since recovered but due to a missing dateline, Google News ran the story as today's news. The story was then picked up by other news aggregators and eventually headlined as a news flash on Bloomberg. This triggered automated trading programs to dump UAL, cratering the stock from $12 to $3 and evaporating 1.14 billion dollars (nearly United's total market cap today) in shareholder wealth. The stock recovered within the day to $10 and is now trading at $9.62, a market cap of $300M less than before Google ran the story."

Full article here:
http://online.wsj.com/article_print/SB122100794359017593.html

Teh internets has become self-aware... and it hates United Airlines.

Thorin · September 10, 2008, 03:40:13 PM

Holy crap! Imagine losing a billion dollars in value because of a technical glitch in reporting the news!

Mr. Analog · September 10, 2008, 03:52:06 PM

Quote from: Thorin on September 10, 2008, 03:40:13 PM
Holy crap! Imagine losing a billion dollars in value because of a technical glitch in reporting the news!

What's scarier is the fact that there are automated trading bots mindlessly consuming news feeds from THE INTERNET.

Lazybones · September 10, 2008, 03:54:12 PM

My first thought was I wish I had purchased stock when it hit bottom.

Thorin · September 10, 2008, 03:56:45 PM

Yeah, buy $30,000 when it's $3, sell when it's $10, and you just made $70k, a year worth of salary!

Mr. Analog · September 10, 2008, 04:01:12 PM

Quote from: Lazybones on September 10, 2008, 03:54:12 PM
My first thought was I wish I had purchased stock when it hit bottom.

I wish it had glitched on NEWSCORP, that would have been grand!

Darren Dirt · September 10, 2008, 06:18:17 PM

Quote from: Thorin on September 10, 2008, 03:40:13 PM
Holy crap! Imagine losing a billion dollars in value because of a technical glitch in reporting the news!

Imagine being the programmer who did it on purpose and bought tons of UAL stock before it recovered!

Mr. Analog · September 10, 2008, 10:14:27 PM

Quote from: Darren Dirt on September 10, 2008, 06:18:17 PM
Quote from: Thorin on September 10, 2008, 03:40:13 PM
Holy crap! Imagine losing a billion dollars in value because of a technical glitch in reporting the news!

Imagine being the programmer who did it on purpose and bought tons of UAL stock before it recovered!

That guy would be "pound you in the ass" federal prison pretty quick I'd guess heh.