A whack of (presumed) fat-fingered orders caused a massive, one-second drop in stock-trading yesterday; the trades fell through the cracks in the anti-flash-crash stuff that’s supposed to keep the high-frequency traders from destroying the planet.
A modest version of that happened in a bunch of stocks yesterday. AOL, for instance, pictured above, just trucked along, then WHOOM, then went right back to trucking along. MoneyBeat has some intraday charts — of AOL, Marathon Petroleum, Lorillard, Canadian Natural Resources, Nabors Industries and, awkwardly Nasdaq OMX — and is it weird that I want to get large prints and hang them on my wall? They’re kind of beautiful, although I guess “my kindergartner could have drawn that” would be a valid criticism. They have a distinctly scribbled look.
Stock Markets Had a Rough Second Yesterday [Matt Levine/Bloomberg View]
(via Interesting People)