SEC Opens Inquiry Into How Google News Mix-Up Caused $1B Run On United Stock

The US Securities and Exchange Commission has opened a "preliminary inquiry" into how an outdated bankruptcy story sparked a $1 billion run on an airline's stock value.

The article about how United Airlines filed for bankruptcy in 2002 was revived when it showed up on a newspaper site's "most viewed" section on Monday.

Read the whole story here.

Comments

[getafreeseo]

We are a group of SEO and we just started this website where everyone can have its own featured SEO choose ur SEO for Free mail us at [e-mail] - www.getafreeseo.com

[EinChicago]

The scary part of the story is the complete lack of human involvement. It's the "Terminator/Matrix" scenario but by idiocy not design. In Terminator/Matrix, we invented computers so smart they decided to take over and deliberately started a war. In reality, we are inventing programs so dumb, they can trigger massive events like this by complete accident and stupidity. It seems like we're just one domino shy of some stupid scenario like this causing an enflamed situation with teh wrong ompany (i.e., oil company) leading to a war for resources rather than a temporary drop in stock prices.

[ErnestineBass]

This is hardly an insolated occurence. I've run into more than a few articles online that lacked an original date of publication. When in doubt, check more than one source.

[Tom95134]

I guess not of the highly paid idiots that work at brokerage houses and mutual funds could take the time to call UAL and check to see if it was true.

[mamacat]

Its nice to see that we have an agency that is responsible for investigating why inaccureate news was broadcast that affected a company's stock price.

Now, how about someone caring about how lies and smears can be broadcast that steal elections?

[gevan]

Allright allready . . .pass a law forbidding stocks from falling in value. Problem fixed.

[JBS]

Let me see if I understand what happened:

1. One unidentified insomniac looking at the Florida newspaper's website, views the archived story at 1:00 am in the morning.
2. The newspaper's site then flags the story one of the "most popular" on the website - with NO DATELINE.
3. Googlebot picks up the flagged story from the newspaper website and adds it to it's morning queue.
4. Another unidentified someone uploads the Google News link to Bloomberg - still without a dateline.
5. Some unknown number of traders start dumping the stock based on the Bloomberg link to Google's link to the Florida newspaper - still with no dateline, and without having actually read the story???
6. The large number of stock sales resulting from trader's panic selling ...
(meanwhile another unidentified someone independently links the story from the newspaper website to Bloomberg)
7. ... causes the stock price to fall ...
8. ... which in turn triggers COMPUTER GENERATED panic selling ...
9. ... which further depresses the stock price ...
10. ... which cascades into an all out panic to dump the stock.
11. Until still another unidentified someone at Nasdaq finally notices something is going on ...
12. ... and halts trading the stock until even more unidentified someones can actually READ THE STORY?

NOW, the idiots who let their trading programs run away are looking for someone with DEEP POCKETS to SUE!!!!! ... which makes it all Google's fault.

[wendynyc]

Well don't you think stories should be dated clearly - so one can tell how old or new the news really is -

however-

apart from that - speculators have been having a field day under the GOP admin - less regulation means they can run up or down any area of the stock market whenever they wish - we've seen it in food prices recently as well as oil prices -

So - what does this tell us about regulation?