Slashdot Mirror
Buy Low, Spam High
An anonymous reader writes "A recent study on spam has revealed that spammers see a return between 4.9% and 6% when selling stocks they have bought low and spammed the world with." From the article: "The researchers say that approximately 730 million spam e-mails are sent every week, 15% of which tout stocks. Other estimates of spam volumes are far higher. The study, by Professor Laura Frieder of Purdue University in the US and Professor Jonathan Zittrain from Oxford University's Internet Institute in the UK, analysed more than 75,000 unsolicited e-mails. All of the messages touting stocks and shares were sent between January 2004 and July 2005."
Not exactly. They're getting a 4-6% gain the next day, not annually. Fire them off once a week, and you're talking several thousand percent gain annually.
It's still an attempt at market manipulation, and the SEC should come down on anybody who does this like the fist of an angry god. CEOs have gone to prison over this, you would think they could at least bitchslap these spam-and-dump traders with a hefty fine.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
There is a certain group of people who are constitutionally unable to do something as mainstream as say, investing in solid funds to make their money. They need to feel like they are "getting the better" of others.
Spammers are usually certified losers, and few really ever actually make anything of themselves, and if they do make any money, they manage to lose it somehow by themselves, or AOL starts digging in their backyards for it.
These people you could almost feel sorry for if they weren't clogging your mail box, stealing bandwidth, trying to sell bad deals to the unwary, and underwriting organized crime by paying for use of their botnets.
On second thought... maybe I don't feel sorry for them at all.
Not exactly. They're getting a 4-6% gain the next day, not annually. Fire them off once a week, and you're talking several thousand percent gain annually.
Quote TFA: The team found that a spammer who bought shares the day before starting an e-mail campaign and then sold them the day after could make a return on his or her investment of 4.9%.
Now the stock market is open ~250 days/year. 1,04^250 = 18127,37 = 1812737%. Not just thousands, millions. Now that's a decent ROI for any "company".
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings