Almost certainly apocryphal. There are multiple versions of the quote floating around. Also: Who was Watson talking to? How did this story get from him to us?
I heard the exact same story in a Wall St. trading firm I worked for - except the story was about a trade gone wrong (trades X shares instead of $X worth of shares, causing the Dow to slide and all sorts of havok).
There's a pretty credible one about AOL's board not firing Steve Case after spending $5 million on him. (For those who have forgotten, Steve didn't actually found AOL; he was brought in from the outside.)
