« Who Gives the Best Analyst Parties? Not Tech Companies | Main | Teachings of the Wii Generation »
Latest Stories
- Excel Wankers and Recession Averages
- Sorry, New York is Closed. Check Back Later.
- Catching Falling 2009 Earnings Estimate Knife
- Survivorship Bias in Global Markets
- Talking Positions on a Lazy-ish Retirement Portfolio
May 31, 2007
Roil Markets. Be Alan Greenspan for the Day.
Apparently you don't have to be Alan Greenspan to spout stuff and roil world markets. I missed this story until now, but a Tulsa CBS affiliate's website contained an erroneous article about an Oklahoma refinery fire yesterday -- which immediately caused U.S. oil prices to spike by $0.40.Impressive, but certainly something that will give cheer to an emerging cadre of stockhackers. You will see more people trying this sort of thing going forward, and it won't just be Engadget and a Tulsa television station that get caught up.
World oil prices jumped briefly on Wednesday after a television station in Tulsa, Oklahoma -- the No. 62 U.S. media market -- posted an erroneous story about a refinery fire on its Web site.
At 10:14 EDT, CBS affiliate KOTV reported that a lightning strike had caused a fire at an Oklahoma refinery -- sparking a flurry of excitement among energy traders and boosting U.S. crude prices 40 cents.
The refining company announced the story was "completely wrong" and the station withdrew the story.
Photo
"All it takes is a screw-up on a Web site to move the market. It just goes to show how tense this market is," said a Houston-based oil trader.
Sphere It
| 
Digg it
| 
Bookmark it
| 
Stumble it
| 
Facebook it
Andi, unfortunately you're onto something. We joked about it with the Apple internal email fiasco, but it looks like companies/traders may be onto something here. Not that traders (especially oil & gas) would KNOWINGLY commit any acts that could even remotely be construed as unscrupulous or unethical or, God fordid, ILLEGAL, but the cat's out of the bag now: place your bet, tip off an obscure news outlet who will not corroborate the story before putting it on their website, then sit back and watch while profit-larity ensues. Somebody PLEASE plug this hole and mandate some accountability for fact-checking by news sites before posting their items - if nothing else, at least require a disclaimer for non-fact-checked stories to be noted as such!
This sounds like BS, gas prices would go up due to a refinery problem not oil.
>>> gas prices would go up due to a refinery problem not oil.
True. This means the reporter got the story wrong, or the traders were just clueless. Then 40 cents isn't much of a spike on a $64 unit, it could just be a coincidental fluctuation.
And Reuters is often incompetent and occasionally dishonest. Probably fake bs, but then again it may be genuine bs--you just can't tell. More hole than cheese...
This reminds me of EMLX.
Profiting on stocks with planted false rumors was old hat when the robber barons did it in the 1880's and has been illegal since 1934. But I guess it's different this time. :)