At 5:01pm, Calculated Risk put up a blog entry with the headline "Report: WaMu Attracts No Bids".
At 6:19pm, Calculated Risk put up a new blog entry, with the headline "Report: WaMu has Attracted Multiple Bidders".
A little bit later, Calculated Risk backtracked, editing the second headline to read "Report: WaMu has Attracted Multiple Potential Bidders".
At 6:57pm, Calculated Risk put up a third blog entry, with the headline "Financial Times: Five banks Evaluating WaMu".
As I write this, at 7:35pm, the three blog entries between them have amassed 226 comments.
No wonder the market’s so frazzled. And this is by any standards a smaller story than the big ones right now: the RTC II, the fate of Morgan Stanley, the various Fed liquidity facilities and how and where they’re being used.
I’m getting on a plane tomorrow — I’m flying to Las Vegas, where I’m on a panel at Blog World. I’m sure I’ll miss a lot of news — but I’ll also miss a lot of noise. If you don’t need to be keeping up with all this stuff on an hour-by-hour basis, it’s really best not to even try. There’s precious little upside, and lots of downside.