Sometimes you really don't want to follow the herd

You say Twitter, I say Tweeter: Investor mix-up?

A bankrupt electronics retailer appears to have gotten caught up in the investor fervor for Twitter.

Apparently, there was some confusion between the tickers TWTR and TWTRQ.  Just a guess, but I doubt that there's ever been an IPO with a ticker that ended in Q, except maybe Q.  Of course, the fair thing to do would be to cancel all the purchases, because it's an easy mistake to make!?!  Takes a couple of seconds to check what the company name is too.  Besides, Tweeter, Twitter, what's the difference?

It just seems un-American to me to stop trading because of some confusion.  I mean, why shouldn't we be allowed to profit from someone else's confusion?  It happens in the real world all the time, so why not in the Wall Street dream world?

This is probably a good demonstration of the herd mentality that often takes over in stocks.  Someone got excited because a stock started moving up, and not having any idea why it might be moving up decided they needed to get some of that.  Besides, if we're going to stop trading because of some confusion, then we might as well just shut down the stock exchanges altogether.  In case nobody noticed, there's a lot of confusion in the market.