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Dow Jones technical error spreads fake news story of Google acquiring Apple

15 points by panarky 9y ago

panarky 9y ago
Please disregard the headlines that ran on Dow Jones Newswires between 9:34AM ET and 9:36AM ET. Due to a technical error, the headlines were published. Technical errors don't manufacture false stories from thin air.
- wonder_bread 9y ago
  Almost has to be a troll in the system who decided to prove a point
- icedchai 9y ago
  Sounds like test data (fake stories) made it's way into the wrong environment. This is easy enough to do. That was the technical error.
chollida1 9y ago
Since about 2013, most, all?, completely automated trading systems have ingested some form of news headline as well as sentiment on it. 2-3 times year a story like this comes across the news wire and its a good test to see who blindly follows headlines, vs who actually uses the headline and sentiment news as just one of many signals that are mixed together to create a trading signal. Of course since most algos also have a momentum component, it becomes hard to see who has poor risk management vs who is just following the momentum and piling on:( I remember two cases, one was about the FED raising rates by 2% and another was that a plane had flown into the whitehouse that was published by the AP. Rule #1 of machine learning - No data is clean, no matter how much you pay for the data, there is always noise.
dang 9y ago
Url changed from https://www.theverge.com/2017/10/10/16453226/dow-jones-fake-headlines-google-acquiring-apple-technical-error https://www.theverge.com/2017/10/10/16453226/dow-jones-fake-..., which points to this, but (in an apparent dick move) doesn't link to it.
paxy 9y ago
People always talk about the perils of algorithmic trading and how easy bots are to fool, but in this case they all basically ignored the news. That feels pretty sophisticated (and scary) to me.
twoodfin 9y ago
I wonder where on the spectrum from metaphysical impossibility to metaphysical certainty the accurate version of this headline is. Sure, AAPL’s enterprise value is north of $800B, and GOOGL’s market cap is ~$680B. But I bet stranger things have happened in capital markets, albeit not at this scale. If Alphabet’s board were hell-bent on acquiring Apple, could they get the leverage to do it from anyone short of a national government? (Putting aside the obvious antitrust concerns.)

15 points by panarky 9y ago

Please disregard the headlines that ran on Dow Jones Newswires between 9:34AM ET and 9:36AM ET. Due to a technical error, the headlines were published. Technical errors don't manufacture false stories from thin air.

wonder_bread 9y ago
Almost has to be a troll in the system who decided to prove a point
icedchai 9y ago
Sounds like test data (fake stories) made it's way into the wrong environment. This is easy enough to do. That was the technical error.

chollida1 9y ago

Since about 2013, most, all?, completely automated trading systems have ingested some form of news headline as well as sentiment on it. 2-3 times year a story like this comes across the news wire and its a good test to see who blindly follows headlines, vs who actually uses the headline and sentiment news as just one of many signals that are mixed together to create a trading signal. Of course since most algos also have a momentum component, it becomes hard to see who has poor risk management vs who is just following the momentum and piling on:( I remember two cases, one was about the FED raising rates by 2% and another was that a plane had flown into the whitehouse that was published by the AP. Rule #1 of machine learning - No data is clean, no matter how much you pay for the data, there is always noise.

dang 9y ago

Url changed from https://www.theverge.com/2017/10/10/16453226/dow-jones-fake-headlines-google-acquiring-apple-technical-error https://www.theverge.com/2017/10/10/16453226/dow-jones-fake-..., which points to this, but (in an apparent dick move) doesn't link to it.

paxy 9y ago

People always talk about the perils of algorithmic trading and how easy bots are to fool, but in this case they all basically ignored the news. That feels pretty sophisticated (and scary) to me.

twoodfin 9y ago

I wonder where on the spectrum from metaphysical impossibility to metaphysical certainty the accurate version of this headline is. Sure, AAPL’s enterprise value is north of $800B, and GOOGL’s market cap is ~$680B. But I bet stranger things have happened in capital markets, albeit not at this scale. If Alphabet’s board were hell-bent on acquiring Apple, could they get the leverage to do it from anyone short of a national government? (Putting aside the obvious antitrust concerns.)