Submitted by Tyler Durden on 11/29/2012 15:23 -0500
Whiting Petroleum
Whiting Petroleum just experienced a 'fat-finger' as we are sure Pisani and his ilk will describe it. What clearly happened was the headline/story scraping algos were tripped up by a sentence containing a bullish start and a bearish finish...
Whiting Petroleum Corp. explored selling itself [BULLISH buy buy buy] earlier this year but decided not to proceed after buyers balked over the oil producer’s asking price [BEARISH sell sell sell], according to people familiar with the sale efforts.
By the time the algos had read that first sentence of a WSJ Deal Journal blog post, the stock had pumped-and-dumped over 8% in 250 milliseconds - at which point humans entered the party (and sold). Efficient liquidity providers indeed.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2012-11-29/danger-dyslexic-headline-scanning-algos

Realist - Everybody in America is soft, and hates conflict. The cure for this, both in politics and social life, is the same -- hardihood. Give them raw truth.