In a bizarre turn of events , a short lived bomb hoax on micro blogging social network site Twitter has erased USD 200 billion of value from US stock markets . Most of the transactions happened online without any human interference. A tweet purportedly from the Associated Press just before 1:08 p.m. reported two explosions in the White House and that President Barack Obama had been injured. The posting sent the Dow Jones Industrial Average tumbling roughly 145 points in an instant.

Shortly after wards, the AP said the tweet was a fake resulting from hacking by an outside group, and the White House confirmed there were no explosions. But traders employing so-called algorithms that automatically buy and sell shares after scanning news feeds—including posts on social media sites like Twitter  and Facebook  have already done the damage.

Industry experts have shown their disgust over the matter as R.J. Grant, associate director of equity trading at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods says “ "It's frustrating and scary that a tweet can erase hundreds of billions from the market in a short time, but that's the world we live in,"...

Meanwhile, in an another  Twitter post, a group identifying itself as the Syrian Electronic Army took responsibility for the fake AP message. The group, which describes itself as "a group of enthusiastic Syrian youths" and supports Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

(Jyotishman)