Should reporters face SEC inquiry?

by on May 4, 2007

Brier Dudley of the Seattle Times has a good point. The New York Post really jerked around the market and created a lot of wealth for someone. Who benefitted? Did they benefit from the rumor improperly? Note: I haven’t sold any of my stock recently and I haven’t bought any either. I don’t own Yahoo stock. In fact, I’m soon going to sell my Microsoft stock and not buy any stocks in the technology industry. There’s too much conflict there if I own stocks in the industry. There’s WAY too much “footsie” going on here.

  • I hope Microsoft wouldn't think that buying Yahoo will make people change their home page from google.com or use msn search - it wont. I don't even know if having a better search will turn the majority.
  • No one reads the NY Post, it's a rag and the number 5 paper in a city with 4 papers - Long Island's Newsday has more readers in the city then the Post does.
  • Paul: well SOMEONE was reading! :-)
  • Christopher Coulter
    Whole lotta Googlers crying, Yahoo and Microsoft would be a trainwreck on the level of AOL/TW. But obvious it was a rumor pitch up, pump and dump, gullible reporters, imho.
  • Got to agree this was pretty fishy and classic case of pump & dump. It would be interesting to see the action on the options market prior to today to see if there was unusual volume.
  • Robert,

    I think this is what I stated a few weeks ago regarding Ebay and all the pre-announcement of Stumble Upon. Good to see the exchange we had in these comments appears to have had some impact on your thinking since that time.
    http://scobleizer.com/2007/04/19/stumbleupon-ac...
  • I think that anybody who manipulates a stock price artificially should be subject to an SEC inquiry.

    I DO NOT believe that they should face criminal prosecution. If somebody does do that and they get caught, the liability should be limited to paying the money back and perhaps a small fine.

    I highly disagree with what happened to Martha Stuart. She did not deserve that.
  • Miles Archer
    Martha Stewart was prosecuted for lying to investigators because they couldn't prove anything. Lying to the cops should be protected by the Bill of Rights.

    Someone who manipulates stock prices is a completely different story. If it could have been proved that she illegally used insider information, she rightly should have gone to jail.

    Manipulating stock prices is stealing from me! Throw their asses in jail.
  • Mr. Robinson
    "I think that anybody who manipulates a stock price artificially should be subject to an SEC inquiry.

    If somebody does do that and they get caught, the liability should be limited to paying the money back and perhaps a small fine."

    -----------

    Hello?
    If someone artificially manipulates the stock market, they affect a lot more people than just themselves.

    Let's say a retirement fund were heavily invested in Stock A, and someone manipulated the market by floating a false rumor designed to make Stock A crash (maybe to make good on a "short" or something); the retirement fund would be screwed; and who knows how long it would take for the market to correct itself back to the original value.

    "Paying the money back" plus a "small fine" isn't sufficient when you think about how many people you can screw over by messing with the market.
  • javed
    no journos should not be investigated by SEC. the government should spend that money in doing other things.

    Here are some things to remember: NY Post said MSFT and YHOO were "talking" about merger. They did not report that YHOO has accepted the offer, did they?
    If you lose money in a stock, it is your own fault. How many of these people who rushed to buy YHOO's stock would send a portion of their profit, had the deal gone through, to the journo who brought it to their attention? but if they lose money then it is all the journo's fault!! If you buy a stock basing it on a NY Post column, then you deserve to lose money.
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