Slashdot Mirror
Below-Expected Earnings For Google Posted Early, Trading Halted
An anonymous reader writes with this snippet from the BBC: "Trading in Google shares has been suspended after the internet giant released its third-quarter results early by mistake. Google blames financial printing firm RR Donnelley for filing an early draft of the results, which had been expected after the closing bell. Shares in Google were down 9% when trading in the stock was suspended. Shares had fallen as much as 10.5% at one stage. In a statement, Google said: 'Earlier this morning RR Donnelley, the financial printer, informed us that they had filed our draft 8K earnings statement without authorisation... We have ceased trading on Nasdaq while we work to finalise the document. Once it's finalised we will release our earnings, resume trading on Nasdaq and hold our earnings call as normal at 1:30 PST.'"
Just in time for the 25th anniversary of Black Monday crash, where the Dow lost 22% in one day.
"I bless every day that I continue to live, for every day is pure profit."
how are they going to report drastically different earnings a few hours later? the quarter ended over a month ago, it's not like they can just push some business into the release to meet the numbers.
It's not that the numbers will change. It's that you don't just surprise people with numbers, period. Release it after the markets are closed so everyone effectively gets full information at the same point in time. As for "finishing" the document, it may just be a matter of editing, etc. I highly doubt there would be material changes made this late.
Actually, authorisation with an s IS English. Authorization is American.
Look on the bright side, it has a better chance of being more accurate than Fox news.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
I'm the American who submitted it. Born and raised, lightly educated by comparison.
I realize how flawed the BBC is as a British Commonwealth Corporation, in your eyes.
I found the summary contained the most timely and pertinent information in a concise blob...
of any major media reporting body that was running the story at the time.
I could give two shits about 'finalise' v 'finalize', potato/potahto or other musket v. rifle instances.
It took roughly 15 or 20 for Timothy to massage the href and post it up.
The trading resumed 8 minutes ago.
Time was of the fucking essence, in a sense.
It's a Cold War that's been going on since US independence.
I'm Australian, so technically i can only "authorise", but due to invasion by US forces through the idiot box, many of my fellow (particularly younger) countrymen (or "country people" for the political correctness trolls) are surrendering to ignorance and defecting.
At the end of the day it probably doesn't really matter anyway due to the impending "New World Order" and all...
True. But the big exchanges don't allow that, you do that by trading off exchange. Basically, the government never made selling stock off the exchanges illegal, so people use that as a workaround. So the only after hours rule doesn't stop everything. However, after hours trading is a fraction of what happens during the day. So the rule isn't perfect, but does help. Also, after hours trading doesn't always predict what will happen correctly- after Jobs died, APL was down after hours, but went up on open.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
In this case Google requested that the Nasdaq halt trading for a "news-pending" reason. The general theory behind allowing a company to halt it's own stock is so to give time for investors to evalute potentially material financial information (or in this case accidential financial information).
There is also a regulatory pause (called a circuit-breaker) if a stock moves more than 10% in five minute window. The primary reason for this type of halt trading is that there is a large imbalance between buyers and sellers (much larger than the market makers can absorb). In these types of situations, it is essentially impossible to fairly price (and thus report) a stock trade which can cause the instability in automated trading programs that you are referring to.
I believe that the erroneous report was released @12:30EDT and by the time GOOG was halted @12:50, it was only down about 9%, and it resumed trading @3:20 and finished only about 8% down. I don't think that was enough to trigger an automatic circuit-breaker. The stock was halted because GOOG requested it (when it realized what had happened).
English? You mean the language they speak in England? The language that spells authorisation with an S, not a Z?
I wouldn't be surprised if a bunch of manufacturers all submitted products to be chosen as the next Google branded Nexus device. ASUS happened to win this time.
Great reply, thanks. I've been awake for a long time so it wasn't the best post I could have made.
Your point about not pissing off other OEMs is well made considering the history of MS and it's 'strategic partners'. It was what i was alluding to. Asymco had a great post about this but I can't find it right now.
Yoir reply is Thoughtful, directed and appreciated
Watch those corners
Panic selling always overshoots down past where the price will eventually settle.
This word "always", it doesn't mean what you think it does. It's very common for moderate panic to be just the first stage of a major drop in a stock's price, in which case the price will accelerate downward instead of settling back again. There's a popular phrase for the idea of "oh, it dropped a bunch, that must have gone too far; let me buy some and profit when it corrects": catching a falling knife. If you do it right, you get some small profit as the price returns to the mean from its extreme point. But if you're wrong, you can lose a giant amount of money. The odds of a trade played against panic are reasonable, but the risk/reward ratio is terrible. You can correctly play short-term panics a dozen times successfully but lose all that profit with one serious loss, when the initial panic turns into only more panic.