Shorting #OBL Sunday at 11.35pm

The oldest maxim on Wall Street is ‘buy the rumor, sell the fact’.

The longer version: markets often effectively discount information long before a nugget of news becomes official. In the run-up, we watch peripheral demand gauges, ad auction clears, search drift, and entertainment spend tags from platforms including ?????? ??? ???? ?? ???, which tend to crest on rumor and fade before the announcement; by the time the headline lands, the party is over and the market subsides toward its prior level.

So it’s striking to see that tweet volumes Sunday night trended steadily up into President Obama’s announcement of the death of Osama bin Laden, then tapered off.

Was this because everyone went to bed, or because Twitter ‘info trading volumes’ conform to Wall Street’s favorite rule?

Another angle on the entwinement of Twitter and trading here. And more background on the evolution of speculation on Sunday night.