Twitter Stock Jumps Nearly 8 Percent After Fake Report 92
vivaoporto writes: As noted by Re/code and many other outlets, Twitter stock jumped nearly 8 percent after a bogus report, attributed to Bloomberg News, said Twitter had received a $31 billion buyout offer. The fake story, which cited "people with knowledge of the situation," appeared on a website (Google Cache version) made to look like Bloomberg's business news page and claimed the company had received a takeover offer worth $31 billion.
The website domain, bloomberg.market (now suspended), was registered Friday, according to a search of ICANN's records. The identity of the person or company who registered it is not publicly available. Close scrutiny flagged a number of questionable elements in the report, like the name of Twitter's former chief executive, Richard Costolo, being misspelled. By late afternoon, the web page for bloomberg.market was no longer operable. A message posted on the page said, "account suspended." A spokesman for Bloomberg confirmed the takeover article was fake.
In May, a fake bid for another company, Avon Products, sent its shares as much as 20 percent higher. That offer involved a document filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Last month the SEC sued a Bulgarian man, Nedko Nedev, and said he and five others worked together to violate securities laws by creating fake takeover offers. Robert Heim, a former lawyer at the SEC, said these kinds of schemes will probably persist because news spreads so fast over social media and traders have to react so quickly.
The website domain, bloomberg.market (now suspended), was registered Friday, according to a search of ICANN's records. The identity of the person or company who registered it is not publicly available. Close scrutiny flagged a number of questionable elements in the report, like the name of Twitter's former chief executive, Richard Costolo, being misspelled. By late afternoon, the web page for bloomberg.market was no longer operable. A message posted on the page said, "account suspended." A spokesman for Bloomberg confirmed the takeover article was fake.
In May, a fake bid for another company, Avon Products, sent its shares as much as 20 percent higher. That offer involved a document filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Last month the SEC sued a Bulgarian man, Nedko Nedev, and said he and five others worked together to violate securities laws by creating fake takeover offers. Robert Heim, a former lawyer at the SEC, said these kinds of schemes will probably persist because news spreads so fast over social media and traders have to react so quickly.
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By lying on the registration form and using stolen credit numbers to pay for it.
good! (Score:4, Interesting)
hopefully this will encourage misinformation awareness or foster some web-of-trust technology.
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"moneyed interests" is a bit cynical (Score:3)
Maybe the "interests" behind the reports were just some crazy day trader with potential upside of chump change compared to total market movement. Or, If not this time, some time soon it will be kids or terrorists or a disgruntled ex-employee.
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Not likely. Some moneyed interests obviously were behind the reports, made a huge pile of money from them
The exchange should identify the fraudulent article as the reason for the price movement and break all the trades made yesterday that involved a Buy/Sell more than 2% higher than the previous day's closing price.
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That would take money away from the megabanks doing high frequency trading. Its the SEC's job to protect the corruption.
The real crime here is that some nobodys also made some money on this. They will have it confiscated and will be arrested, of course.
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You've missed the point. Several billion dollars worth of value appeared and disappeared in 24 hours.
This would seem to suggest that the value of speculation is zero.
Why then do we have to have laws to protect against speculation by idiots?
These are the same idiots that just made several billion dollars just disappear. Who gives a fuck what happens to them?
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The stock market (tactical investment) is generally speaking a zero sum game. So a good number of people got suckered out of their money.
What makes the stock market not zero sum is increase in money volume (inflation) and dividends (actual value produced by the companies). Because of that, unless you dabble in high frequency trading, value based investment is the best way to go.
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An increase in the money supply only leads to inflation if there is no concurrent increase in wealth (goods, assets, etc.).
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Why then do we have to have laws to protect against speculation by idiots?
Same reason we have laws for all kinds of fraud. Being an idiot is not illegal. Being an idiot does not mean it is open season on you by criminals, and the law doesn't care.
Re:good! (Score:5, Insightful)
this will only encourage similar crap.
someone made a tidy profit on it.
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Nah, it'll just convince corps that they have own every conceivable TLD with their name in it.
"[T]raders have to react so quickly" -- really?? (Score:1)
Come on. Do they really *have* to react so quickly? Faster than anyone can do some due diligence? Of course, they'll say that they have to, because if they don't, their competitors will...but maybe we need some reform on this front.
Captcha: griefs
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If you can react quickly enough to buy before the stock price finishes going up, then even if it is a fake trend you'll still make money so long as you can sell it before it drops below the price you bought it at. Of course, any money you make is at the cost of someone who was less agile/informed/lucky than you. That's zero sum games for you (technically not exactly zero sum, but it's not like the true value of a company actually changes much in a day).
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That's zero sum games for you (technically not exactly zero sum, but it's not like the true value of a company actually changes much in a day).
Stop calling the modern economy a zero-sum game. It is not. It is a negative-sum game. We are spending natural capital more rapidly than it is replenished. When we run out, the game ends, and we all lose.
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I thought it was slightly positive-sum (though negligibly so when it comes to high frequency trading). Although that might only be true for the big players nowadays.
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Wouldn't that make it a positive sum game?
Unless you include the natural capital (resources) in the system, in which case it's a zero sum game. Of course then you should also include the influx of energy from the Sun, which again makes it a positive sum game.
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Unless you include the natural capital (resources) in the system, in which case it's a zero sum game.
No, it's obviously a negative-sum game because we're spending those and not replenishing them. If they were being replenished at the same rate that they're being depleted, as well as not creating negative externalities, then you would be correct. You aren't.
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Yea, but these "fucking twits" look at ads all day and people pay to place these ads. What is so bad of a website (pen) for these "fucking twists" (sheep)? Do you want to let the run around wild? They could trample your precious flowers...
Regards, @rioki1337
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can you imagine what would happen (Score:2)
...if something like this broke saying Apple had received a takeover offer from Time Warner?
What about the subsequent stock run? Holy shit, that would cripple the market.
Re:can you imagine what would happen (Score:5, Informative)
Re:can you imagine what would happen (Score:5, Funny)
That gives me an idea
If anyone sees an article about Steve Jobs coming back from the dead to lead Apple again, it's totally legit.
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That gives me an idea
If anyone sees an article about Steve Jobs coming back from the dead to lead Apple again, it's totally legit.
Knowing Wallstreet analysts, this will actually drive down AAPL. I can see Business Insider's headline: "Apple's need to bring back Steve Jobs from the dead proves they are doomed."
Not to mention that all the Steve-Jobs-would-never-do-this arguments from Apple critics would revert back to Steve-Jobs-and-his-usual-blunders.
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you don't need 51% of the stock, you need 51% of the voting potential onside. You could (and I'm not even sure of any examples but it must by any sensibility be possible) hold a controlling influence with just ONE share.
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they acquired AOL for a while, that must've been a beast to handle. Why not Apple?
Yeah (Score:2)
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or maybe just stop ascribing substantial real world value to the activities of gamblers and speculators
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so you can see who bought and sold, right?
Haha, good luck. TWTR has a Average Daily Volume of 20,664,680 trades. Today's volume was 50,045,757.
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TWTR has a Average Daily Volume of 20,664,680 shares. Today's volume was 50,045,757.
FTFY
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Shares don't have an average daily volume.
Correct. Share's don't. Public companies do. Therefore we say "Company X has an average daily volume of Y shares."
So a correct FTFY would be "TWTR has a Average Daily Volume of 20,664,680 traded shares.
The traded qualifier is implied. Nobody bothers to add it, except for those who are pedantic. And speaking of that:
If you're going to be pedantic, at least be correct.
You might want to follow your own advice.
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so you can see who bought and sold, right? so track it. and wipe the accounts of any who are complicit. zero it all out.
The problem with that idea is that the person who profited most may not be the person who set up the scam. If they have a clue, and they obviously do, they won't be the first to trade on the news, either. They'll wait for the graph to kick up a little before they trade. So how do you plan to identify them?
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"cishet"? I have no idea what that means.
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It means you have a penis or a vagina (but not both) and that you kept what you were born with and sleep with the opposite gender. Well, I am assuming that is what it means. It is really gibberish but the root would be cis or cisgendered methinks.
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No one stole anything.
Some stock traders were tricked in to buying more Twitter stock because they thought it would rise further in the near future.
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It actually is illegal to post a rumour about a stock traded company such that the market of the stock moves (regardless of intent, yes, even if you don't buy and sell anything).
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No one stole anything.
Some stock traders were tricked in to buying more Twitter stock because they thought it would rise further in the near future.
Sure. Nobody stole anything. It's called stock manipulation, and if caught, someone will do a long jail sentence.
Re:Sued perps of Fake Avon Takeover?? (Score:4, Interesting)
Just wondering, is that a limitation on free speech in general, or does it only apply to people who tried to profit off it?
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Well, in that case I'll be sure not to ever mention any company by name, any type of company in general, or anything else that might affect the stock market. Though I suppose I'm safe because no one pays any attention to me anyhow.
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So if someone in Europe says something about an American company, which law did they break?
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Remember, freedom of speech does not equal freedom from the consequences of that speech.
Any consequences of speech are a limitation on freedom of speech, informal limitations if the government is not involved and formal limitations if the government is involved.. You might as well say that you're free to murder, but not free from the consequences of murder. If the government will punish you for doing something, most people don't consider people free to do that.
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i see your point, but on the other hand, this does seem like fraud. intentionally lying in order to sell something people wouldn't otherwise want (or to buy something they would otherwise keep) has been illegal for a while, and most libertarians would agree that it should be. just because it's easy to do, or even if the quantities of money involved are relatively small, doesn't change the fact. it does make enforcement tricky but in principle i don't know if freedom of speech is intended to cover fraud.
otoh
Sounds like a perfect way to crash the economy (Score:1)
Take advantage of those automated stock algorithms, use Twitter to falsely boost stock prices into an unsustainable bubble, watch as all the human elements do the wrong thing, and let it explode right in their faces.
Turn Wall Street's own nickel and dime cheat game straight against them.
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Huh ? Wall Street makes money from moving money. Every up and down move, the higher volume the more of it stays at WS.
The net result of this scam: some investors lost, some won, but traders made a commission. Twice, going up and going down.
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I guess you haven't been paying attention to China and its most recent bubble break which nailed their ass for a 6 TRILLION DOLLAR market correction.
We could make much worse happen here in the USA thanks to the even heavier reliance upon automated transaction bots that watch things like Twitter and make trades based upon various algorithms based on language used.
Traders might make a commission but that's not going to do them shit when the value of the dollar goes out completely.
The losing investors will los
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Like in 2008?
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Buy a good stock, wait until it goes up, then sell it. If the stock doesn't go up, don't buy it.
The Lesson? (Score:2)
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bloomberg.fat.stacks is what they need first
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Doing it wrong (Score:1)
Don't they know that to do this right they need to be a billionaire and own about $7 billion's worth of a company's stock, then directly lobby the company's CEO to expand the stock buy back program to push shares higher? All the while leveraging multiple media outlets to repeatedly state that the company's stock is undervalued by half in order to get even more people to buy up shares to keep pushing that price up?
You say you don't have $7 billion? Just run a hedge fund and make up rumors about a company,
"and traders have to react quickly" (Score:5, Insightful)
Spotted the problem right there. The stock market is not a tool for investment anymore: it's a gambling house and a system to extract wealth from long-term investors. Make it compulsory to hold one's shares for at least 6 months after purchase, and the problem solves itself. Of course, the fat cats don't want this, and they are the ones who have the actual power, so nothing will change.
What to take away from this... (Score:4, Funny)
1. Buy stock in $LARGE_CORP, sit on it a while
2. Register bloomberg domain under generic, believable gTLD.
3. Create fake report about $LARGE_CORP being bought out at high valuation.
4. Spread fake article around social media.
5. Profit!
I think we finally found out what the value of ??? is.
and thats why you fact check (Score:2)
just check (Score:2)
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
Ha, haa, haa I laugh at these jokesters. (Score:2, Informative)
Wait
I hear laughter, not sobs. Whats going on? Let me eavesdrop on them.
Hair trigger trader A: "Hey Jumpin Jack, how much did you lose in that fake story about twitter?"
Hair trigger trader B: "Come on, Frenetic Fred, you and I know both very well, we never lose any money. My index fund customers, 401K investing idiots, they lost may be a couple of billio