The reports on the typo that caused the massive drop in the stock market yesterday are just plain stupid.  The fact that CNBC ran with this story so quickly without any verification is just ridiculous and shows the level of journalism that they put out.

The idea that a trader can accidentally unload billions of shares of a stock simply by accidentally typing a B instead of an M is 100% false.  What if he typed in a T, would he unload trillions of shares????  It is outrageous to think that the trading systems don’t have built-in safeties to prevent “typos” from crashing the market.  To verify, I actually spoke to a former Wall St. trader and he said you would have to place 3-4 phone calls at least to make a trade that size – a little different than missing the M key on the keyboard.

I can’t believe how many people are jumping to calm the masses in saying that nothing really happened it was simply a mistake.  The reality is that with accelerated selling in the market, a massive drop is possible.  Plus, I do definitely believe the computer / High-frequency-trading machines have a part in it since when you have computers trading based on algorithms you can hit a bunch of stop losses at one time triggering a massive sell-off.

I’m starting to think CNBC is nothing more than propaganda.  What do you think?