“Citigroup is investigating a rumor that one of its traders entered a trade that helped precipitate a drop of almost 1,000 points in the Dow Jones Industrial Average, a spokesman for the bank said on Thursday.”

Developing story. More here. But I’m afraid I’m just not buying the “dumb trader” excuse. It’s not like he mistakenly added an extra zero before hitting the return key. More likely, if there was indeed an error, the odds seem high that it would be related to high frequency trading.

Ah, Wall Street. Don’t be so afraid to be competent!

And wasn’t there a movie about this sort of thing?