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Twitter Stock Jumps Nearly 8 Percent After Fake Report
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.
And scamming twits is just so much fun. For assholes. Which, let's face it, is everybody these days.
hopefully this will encourage misinformation awareness or foster some web-of-trust technology.
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
...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.
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
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.
Bloomberg will be fined for a few million by SEC.
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.
corporations. They constantly commit fraud in order to make even more money. Watch the government do nothing about this scam.
This is why generic top-level domains are a bad idea.
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.
Which traders are those, the meat popsicle ones or the HFT algorithm ones?
Wtf? Sued (for monetary comp) along with throwing them under the jail a la Bernie Madoff. How does a scam like that *not* come with jail time? If you stole from millions from a bank you'd sure as shit go to jail.
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.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Enquiring minds want to know ... whether it's a good stock picking strategy!?
If you really want to get away with something like this, learn to spell so you won't get caught!
Will probably have increases in phishing for years to come as software eventually is updated to recognize the swath of new TLDs and either explicitly whitelist some and treat others as suspicious.
How did ICANN justify the .any-thing-you-want proposal as anything more than a cash grab? Is Bloomberg supposed to register .market, .finance, .money, etc?
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, then call the company's switchboard operator in order to say that you talked to someone at that company about said rumor (or just lie that you did), and then profit from the price movement your rumor creates. Afterwords you can leverage that experience into being the host of TV financial advice program!
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.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
because you are a greedy speculant, that's why
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.
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
Facebook, Avon, what other household names will inexperienced traders jump on soon as they read some story on a fake new site ?
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).
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
Just check who sold a lot of shares and investigate that person, he/she's most likely to be the culprit..
They WANT to react that quick. If you are working in milliseconds, this is what will happen and it encourages it.
Obviously the stockmarket will defend its own interest and that is the trading of the stock. As long as that is happening; why would they change it?
The stock market is just that: a market where they rent out space so you can sell your goods. They are not intrested if it is crap you are selling or great products. It is about volume.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Twitter is making negative profit and has always done that. They don't have business model. So the worth is negative
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 billions. INBD. There is more where that money comes from. Next month they will dutifully add another 50 billion for us to play with!
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
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.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
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
Can anybody teach me how to register a website ... anonymously??
If you're so certain on that, I would recommend you short the stock, you could make some good money off that.
By lying on the registration form and using stolen credit numbers to pay for it.
Buy a good stock, wait until it goes up, then sell it. If the stock doesn't go up, don't buy it.
What Twitter is really worth and its stock market valuation are two things with no connection whatsoever.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
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.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
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.
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.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"