Fake Apple News Triggers Automated Algos

Dow Jones Newswires is blaming a technical glitch for printing a fake story that said Google (GOOG) was acquiring Apple (AAPL), which temporarily caused automated trading systems -- which apparently are not that smart -- to go haywire.

Apple shares initially spiked at the open on the fake news, jumping to $158. Shares more recently were trading down .47 (.3 percent) to $155.37.

It makes you wonder about all those smart robots. Drill into the details of the fake story and a human could have told you it was fake right away. First of all, it said that Google was acquiring Apple for $9 billion. Apple's current market cap is $800 billion, so there's a bit of a delta there. The story also said that Google employees would take over the Apple headquarters and receive 9 Apple shares for every Google stock, which doesn't make a lot of sense.

Dow Jones provided the following statement:

“Please disregard the headlines that ran on Dow Jones Newswires between 9:34 a.m. ET and 9:36 a.m. ET. Due to a technical error, the headlines were published. All of those headlines are being removed from the wires. We apologize for the error.”

Technical error? Sounds like somebody hacked the system -- although Dow Jones denies that, in which case it must have been some sort of internal prank. You can see the original "news" story below.