Japanese day traders went nuts after confusing the governor of the Bank of Japan with a baseball player
The panic, which we saw on Bloomberg thanks to a tweet from finance blog Russian Market, started after one prominent day trader tweeted that there was about to be an "emergency press conference on Kuroda's resignation."
The account, tweeting under the handle @okasanman, appeared to make a joke about the retirement of baseball player Hiroki Kuroda and the similarity of his name with that of the Governor of the Bank of Japan.
You can see the tweet in the original Japanese below:
Okasanman has around 76,000 followers and his tweet was quickly picked up by others, getting 218 retweets, including from several prominent members of Japan's day trading community.
Soon afterwards, Okasanman tweeted a picture of the baseball player, appearing to clarify his earlier tweet. The yen did not move noticeably against the dollar as a result of the tweet.
Hiroki Kuroda, who played in the USA with the New York Yankees before returning to Japan to finish his career with the Hiroshima Carp team, announced his retirement in October at the age of 41.
"The Japan Series will be the end. I've decided to hang it up," Kuroda said, according to the Kyodo News, as quoted by the New York Daily News. "I've been shown an excellent dream with an excellent team."