For want of a letter, a fortune was lost. Shares in Tweeter, a bankrupt electronics retailer, briefly soared 1,800% on October 4th because some investors mistook its ticker symbol twtrq for twtr, the shorthand chosen by Twitter ahead of the microblogging service's planned stock-market flotation. Trading was halted after the regulator stepped in. But those who bought at the peak price will be regretting their foolishness. So what happened to the idea of an efficient market, in which prices are set by rational investors in command of all pertinent public information? Those who piled into the stock failed to grasp two important facts: first, Twitter has yet to float and second, when it does list, the issue price is highly unlikely to be a few cents.
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