So at 5:39, the machines spotted trouble.
Specifically, they spotted what they thought was a tweet about an earthquake in North Korea. Because “previous [earthquake] reports have indicated a nuclear bomb test, the yen rose on haven demand,” Bloomberg flatly notes.
Apparently, this was the problem:
They’ve since removed the document at that address, but suffice to say it wasn’t related to a new earthquake. Rather, it was just a review of the one that accompanied last weekend’s nuclear test, which everyone probably should have expected given the fact that the magnitude (6.3) was exactly the same.
But as a couple of Twitter users pointed out, the market took a “shoot first and ask questions later approach” (war pun fully intended).
Here’s USDJPY and 10Y yields:
And here’s S&P futs and gold:
To all the Twitter users who are angry at the British Geological Survey for posting an assessment of an earthquake and roiling markets, we would gently suggest that you consider the fact that earth science research is what they are supposed to be doing.
That is, it is their job to study geological events. It is supposed to be your job and the job of the robots “manning” the trading desks to decide what those events mean for markets.
So how about you do you your job and they’ll do theirs, ok? Because only of you screwed up here and it wasn’t the British Geological Survey.
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