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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
If you really want to get away with something like this, learn to spell so you won't get caught!
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!
bloomberg.fat.stacks is what they need first
http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.slashdot.org Errors found while checking this document as HTML5!
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.
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 ?
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.
Just wondering, is that a limitation on free speech in general, or does it only apply to people who tried to profit off it?
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
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..
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).
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.
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.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
they should just register .bloomberg
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.'"
By lying on the registration form and using stolen credit numbers to pay for it.
"cishet"? I have no idea what that means.
Buy a good stock, wait until it goes up, then sell it. If the stock doesn't go up, don't buy it.
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, all ideas are speech and money is now speech, so yeah, it seems like there's a bug somewhere.
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
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
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.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
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
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.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
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.
So if someone in Europe says something about an American company, which law did they break?
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.'"