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[Ether_Snake]

Searched, didn't find a thread.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323735604578441201605193488.html

A short-lived hoax on Twitter briefly erased $200 billion of value from U.S. stock markets on Tuesday, underscoring the vulnerability of financial markets to computerized trading programs that buy and sell shares without human intervention.

A tweet purportedly from the Associated Press just before 1:08 p.m. reported two explosions in the White House and that President Barack Obama had been injured. The posting sent the Dow Jones Industrial Average tumbling roughly 145 points in an instant.

Some said the episode revealed the influence of computer-driven, high-frequency-trading hedge funds, which by some measures account for as much as half of U.S. stock market volume. The computer programs some of them use have expanded their reach to social-media platforms such as Twitter. The Securities and Exchange Commission recently gave the green light to companies to release important information through those venues.

Such computer programs "are incredibly sophisticated," said Eric Pritchett, chief executive at Potamus Trading, a brokerage firm that specializes in electronic trading. A program "reading the feed and seeing 'blowing up' can also read the one saying the account was 'hacked,' " he said.

The figure is believed to be higher than this, and could be as much as 3/4 of all transactions world-wide.

So you read that right; most commodity (fuel, gold, corn, etc.), company value (stocks), bond value (which includes sovereign country risk level valuations), etc., are established by computer algorithms analyzing various streams of inputs ranging from charts and financial reports to Twitter and Facebook, not by individuals.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=545836

All three last threads I made were already posted. The NeoGAF search sucks!

edit2: Oh I was beaten by two minutes:|

 

[ElectricBlue187]

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=545836