Here’s a graph of this afternoon’s DJIA activity (Captured from Google Finance).

DJIA Graph - Afternoon, 6 May 2010

See that big dip, right there about 2:45? Know what caused it? Do you have any idea what suddenly discovered bit of information caused those companies to become 5% less valuable… for nearly 10 whole minutes!

Yeah, me neither. And I bet you won’t find anyone else who can give a reasonable answer. Should I decide to take up gambling, I think I’ll stick to dogs or ponies; both are cuter than stock certificates.

[UPDATE]

Leading theories at the moment include anxiety over Greece, a computer glitch, and someone entering a P&G trade with his or her toes. A ten-minute panic attack? A sudden and previously unrevealed glitch in an otherwise normal day? Nah… Door #3 seems most likely to me.

Regardless, a 1000 point drop for no substantive reason ought to scare the hell out of a lot of us. Baby-boomer Robert Reich seems wisely worried:

Regardless of why it happened, it’s further evidence that the nation’s and the world’s capital markets have become a vast out-of-control casino in which fortunes can be made or lost in an instant — which would be fine except for the fact that most of us have put our life savings there. Pension funds, mutual funds, school endowments — the value of all of this depends on a mechanism that can lose a trillion dollars in minutes without anyone having a clear idea why. So much of the market now depends on computer programs and mathematical models that no one fully understands, so much trading is in the hands of a few people whose fat thumbs or momentary carelessness might sink the economy, so much of global wealth now depends on who can move their money quickest at the slightest provocation — that we are toying with financial disaster every day. The luck or foolishness of a few traders, and inside knowledge and information that some possess and others don’t, combined with ultra high-speed computers, put us all at the whim of a system whose risk is way out of proportion to any public benefits. (Robert Reich – The (Almost) Crash of Wall Street)

Self-regulating markets… I don’t think so. An empty coffee can is looking better and better to me.

More info: Planet Money – Maybe It Wasn’t Just Greece