On Tuesday, the A.P.’s Twitter account had been hacked, sending out a false tweet that alleged the two?explosions occurred at the White House.?
Here’s the tweet that roiled the markets.
And here’s a tweet by A.P, noting it was errant: “@SamHananelAP: Please Ignore AP Tweet on explosions, we’ve been hacked.”
The market reacted by diving 145 points, after it had just incurred a triple-digit rise of 135 points in the Dow Jones Industrial Average, reported MarketWatch.?
It has since rebounded and just closed at 152 as the final bell rung and now the street will await Apple Inc.’s (NASDAQ:AAPL) quarterly earnings report.?
Treasury prices jumped at the time with interest rates dropping to 1.66% as well as Oil prices falling before the tweet had been reversed. The VIX jumped on the news of the fake tweet, but for the day it closed at 13.57, down 5.70%.
According to MarketWatch,?Joseph Greco, managing director of? Meridian Equity Partners, Inc., said the the market’s instant reaction likely came from computerized trading algorithms that keep their eyes on news sites and subsequently activate buy and sell orders from pre-determined rules. He added, ?Clearly this should be scrutinized for its unintended consequences is times of market volatility.??
The A.P.’s newswires had not been affected by the hackers.?