It’s like a botnet worm. Only, instead of eating data it erases market value.

…the Dow Jones stock index fell 600 points in just 6 minutes. Its nadir represented the deepest single-day decline in that market’s 114-year history… the “flash crash,” as it came to be known, was big, unexpected and scary — and a new study says flash events actually happen routinely, at speeds so fast they don’t register on regular market records, with potentially troubling consequences for market stability.

via Nanosecond Trading Could Make Markets Go Haywire | Wired Science | Wired.com.