Event-Driven Trading and the 'New News'

摘要

We know that news can move markets. An example in the fall of 2008 shows how truly unexpected news can impact prices dramatically. At 1:37 a.m. EDT on Sunday, September 7, 2008, Google's news-bots picked up a 2002 story about United Airlines possibly filing for bankruptcy. Apparently, activity at 1:36 a.m. on the website of the Orlando Sentinel caused an old story to resurface on the list of "most viewed stories." In Orlando, in the middle of the night, with Mickey sound asleep and Gatorland closed, a single viewing of the story was enough to do this and attract the attention of one of the newsbots that populate Google's news database. In a cascade of errors, the story was picked up by a person, who, failing to notice that the date on the story was six years gone, put it on Bloomberg, which then set off a chain reaction on services that monitor Bloomberg news. This remarkable ability of the Internet to disseminate "news" resulted in the stock of United's parent, UAL Corporation, dropping 76% in six minutes, with a huge spike in volume, as Exhibit 1 shows.