The Plot Thickens, News At Never O'Clock

The Dow Jones fell a thousand points almost, in just a few minutes. I said to myself when I heard the news, "oh-oh, it's finally started." Then the DJIA made up most of the losses, and it wasn't 1929 all over again (yet).

Later in the day, it was hypothesized that a single trader had hit a B instead of an M and missed the size of a trade by THREE orders of magnitude. Look down at your keyboard and note how close together the B and M keys are. I jotted myself a quick note when that came out:

"DJIA down 1000 at one point today. . . is this the beginning? or will there be another rally? possibly human error, someone hit wrong button on computer . . . riiiight"

You would think by now we would know that person's name, and have seen pictures of him on the street with his jacket torn to shreds by other traders. Instead we have ominous talk about the Obama administration investigating just what happened.

. . . and wouldn't it be just great if the newest rumour were true: Instead of a trader in the US, A hacker in China pushed that B instead of M, and then took out the safeties that were supposed to prevent such a precipitous drop in the value of a security all at once. As a warning.