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Fake E-Mail Results in Angry Apple Shareholders
drhamad writes "Apple stock dropped 2.2% today in mid-afternoon trading as Engadget published news based on a faked e-mail inside Apple. 'Apparently an internal memo was sent to several Apple employees--and forwarded to Engadget--around 9am CT today saying that Apple issued a press release with the news that the iPhone was now scheduled for October, and Leopard was delayed until January. About an hour and a half after that e-mail went out, a second e-mail was sent--this time officially from Apple--saying the first e-mail was a fake, and that the delivery schedule for the iPhone and Leopard had not changed.'"
...is the fact that this hasn't happened more often.
Well, I guess that when you come to expect that a company's news comes primarily from intentional and unintentional leaks due to their own secrecy, it makes sense that people would buy this. Maybe it's time Apple re-thinks their super-secret policies.
I don't respond to AC's.
When something like this happens where a direct financial impact can be measured, do any of the rules change regarding the protections that the reporting website operate under?
If the New York Times reports that Microsoft was filing bankruptcy and the stock plummeted, The NYT would be held to some sort of standard. Sometimes a retraction isn't enough, for instance, to protect from a lawsuit.
Now when it's a website, do any of the protections exist, and what are the implications for these guys in terms of liability?
The SEC just needs to find who shorted the heck out of Apple stock yesterday.
Beer is proof that God loves us, and wants us to be happy.
Just given a few different months, you could quite easily start narrowing down a leak.
Email 1: iPhone delayed until September. Leopard delayed until October.
Email 2: October/October
Email 3: October/November
If you already had a list of suspected leaks you could narrow the field very quickly with different month combinations.
As one Engadget reader commented mere minutes after the initial story was posted:
"This simply does not make any sense.
Apple only pushed Leopard back a few weeks ago, and confirmed the iPhone shipping even more recently when they released their quarterly earnings.
Is someone pulling your leg?"
These are the kind of things that Engadget should have thought about before the story was posted without contacting Apple.
And if they were running behind, as you hypothesize, why would they need to "test if they could push back the releases", either they're behind and they have to, or they're not behind and they don't have to. What do they do if they are running behind and do "scare the sheep"? That makes even less sense.
Perhaps, or maybe it's Apple's way of finding out who's been breaking their NDA.
Yeah, and I'd bet the Board of Directors would have liked a chance to vet that kind of move before blowing away $2 billion in shareholder value. I think this is just a prank gone horribly wrong. But for the grace of common sense go I.
Luke, help me take this mask off
Everyone is jumping all over Apple for their "secrecy" when it clearly has nothing to do with these kinds of episodes which happen at all kinds of companies, not just the clever secretive ones.
Others are guessing about which Apple employee will get fired, when all reports indicate an outsider as the source, not a real Apple employee. As consumers of news therefore, it seems that the majority of us have failed to even discern the basic facts here.
As producers of news, the kiddies at Engadget are the real culprits here and the creators of the whole mess by means of their thoughtless and incompetent "journalism."
They are the ones that did not bother to simply phone up Apple and ask for a confirmation as any decent journalist would normally do. They are the ones that continued to run the false story on the main page even after they received a correction from Apple itself (they put that *after* the break for about an hour after they found out and did not change their headline). They are the ones that filled up their own comments area, calling the people protesting their move "jerks" and telling them to "shut up." They are the ones that deleted posts on their site that were too critical of their actions.
The problem is simply one of a lack of journalistic standards and a blurring of the line between "I'm a rich kid who likes computers and has a website" and "I am an IT reporter." Incompetence and asshattery plain and simple.
Think longer term. There are rumors of a stock consolidation at Apple.
I wouldn't be surprised if someone smeared Apple to get a better price on stock to hold on to. Stock prices will return to normal soon enough, if they haven't already.
If you've been planning it for months then you're an idiot. AAPL dropped to $105 on the "news." Months ago, they were trading around $90. (the last couple weeks they've shot up like a junkie). If you bought your shorts that far back and are cashing out now, then you've lost your shirt.
The problem is that with Apple trading to all time highs at the beginning of the week, lots of people were shorting it, or buying puts.
Not to mention that this Friday is the monthly expiration day for traded options. The big brokerages that underwrite most options have a vested interest in having the stock price go down by the time the market closes this Friday. There are options on about 4 million shares that expire worthless if the stock price is below 110, 3.4 million shares worth that expire worthless if the price is below 105, 5 million shares worth that are worthless if the stock is below 100, etc. The backers of those options would love nothing more than to see as many as possible expire worthless. They've been known to manipulate Apple's share price downward in the week leading into expiration. (Or at least Apple has managed to go down in the days before expiration in each of the last 6 months, even as the stock has been generally going up.)
If you want to know who stands to benefit from Apple going down, see who the big option underwriters are...
-JMP
It's all about timing. This isn't a traditional Canary Trap, where a bunch of possible leaks all get slightly different stories, and you see which one gets out. It's a Timed Canary Trap. You take a possible leak, and you give him a fake story. Couple months later, you do the same thing with a different leak. Now, you keep track of how long it took to get out after you baited the trap, and the shortest one is probably it. If there are a few short ones, find out who those people talk to, and you're probably going to find one person they all connect to. It's like Six Degrees to Kevin Bacon, but it's Six Degrees to the Press instead.
I see your informative link, and raise you a pithy comment.
They wouldn't do this in the cash markets and they certainly wouldn't go long Apples shares as you're describing.
No, if this was manipulation (and I agree with you on the point that it probably was), then someone purchased put options, which increase in value as the underlying security, Apple shares in this case, decline.
They'd select the precise contracts to purchase based upon expiration dates and how far out of the money the put options were. Options give the holder immense leverage; I've controlled $3.4 million in shares using only about $20K in capital.
Short selling Apples shares wouldn't be viable as you're back in the cash market again - no leverage.
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Whatever happened to fact checking? The journalistic process? When did emails become newsworthy?! For god's sake people, wake up!
> I think you're getting your law enforcement agencies confused with ninjas or terrorists.
These days, what's the real difference?
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