fake

i've been trading for 2 and a half years now, and today's event was probably the most memorable

at 10:07am our time, the AP tweeted "Breaking: Two Explosions in the White House and Barack Obama is injured"

at the office, we have a couple different "news" services. one is in the form of a chatroom, and the other is audible and part of our trading platform. we tend to hear any news a couple minutes/seconds before CNN or twitter. at 10:07 we heard from our audible news service "...breaking, AP reporting two explosions at the white house and barack obama is said to be injured..."

 ohhhhhh shit.

the market tanks!, the DOW drops 100 points in the matter of seconds. i'm looking in my new chatroom, and see ppl posting about the explosions. i couldn't believe it, for the next 60 seconds. i must have said "oh shit" and "oh my god" a combined 16 times. the market is just tanking, and people are backing away from all bids and offers. it was crazy. i spent the first 10 seconds cancelling every single bid and offer i had on my screen. luckily, when the market tanked, i didn't get hurt, i didn't get any fills/transactions. then we hear "AP is reporting a possible twitter hack..." and then its confirmed, the AP's twitter (which has 2 million followers) has been hacked, and it was all false. 

the market recovers, and that was that. it was crazy, for those 90 seconds or so, my heart was racing, sooo many different thoughts running thru my head. just think about it, for 90 seconds. NINETY SECONDS, that's a long time if you think about it. for 90 seconds, i was under the impression that there were 2 explosions in the white house, and our President was injured. i was almost in shock, are we at war? how the hell do you get explosives in the white house? is our President dead? how is this possible? oh my god

if you can, go on your iphone. and check today's move in the dow jones or S&P 500. look at that big ass dip in the middle of the day. no seriously, look at some stock charts on your iphone. if you look at the charts, that is fear. why did the market crash? several reasons, and FEAR is one of t hem