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The stock market drop on Feb 27 2007 interested many because it
was sudden, and perhaps more because there was a huge drop
of more than 200 points within a few minutes at one point.
(This turned out to have been caused by a computer glitch,
from overloaded systems updating suddenly.)
Mike Breland proposed looking at it, speculating that it
might have brought many people to a shared state of
excitement. From experience, we know this may not be enough
to produce any effect on the EGG network --
after all, there are winners and losers, and there
certainly is no love or compassion involved. In any case, we thought
it was worth an exploration. Mike also notes other reasons
it might not have a notable effect: "First is the obvious
one that because it happened over a day, vs.
an instant event of tsunami, earthquake, etc., that is why
it did not show
up. The second and less obvious one is that perhaps there
was less effect
because the people affected are spread all over the US and
even past that
and there aren't that many people involved in the market
directly anyway."
The analysis shows very much the level random walk we expect
when there is no "global event" pushing the network.
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