“Yesterday, tech blog Engadget received supposed insider information about a delay of the iPhone until October, and another delay for Leopard, pushing the new OS to January of 2008. Duty bound to report to its readers, it filed a post. Within minutes, some people who read the post were selling their Apple stock, which dipped 3% in mid-day trading yesterday. The origin of the information was an internal Apple memo…which turned out to be fake. Fake or not, Apple’s market capitalization sunk by $4 billion once the memo became public,” Eric Zeman blogs for InformationWeek.
“Some are crying for an SEC investigation. According to a Business 2.0 blog, one shareholder sold 5 million shares within 10 to 15 minutes of seeing the post,” Zeman reports.
“Luckily, the turmoil was brief. The stock recovered most of its value by the end of the day (it closed down 0.17%). There are still a lot of questions that remain unanswered. Who really sent the memo? How did they do it from within the Apple system? Did they hack in? We can only assume that Apple is hunting down the responsible party and will take appropriate action once that person is found,” Zeman writes.
“What are bloggers to do, however, when fed erroneous information that looks real? Their gut instinct is to post first, question later. Lessons learned in Journalism 101, however, would have prevented the debacle. It never hurts to pick up the phone and call a company rep to confirm the validity of the information. Will this delay the story? Sure. But in the end, accuracy is more important than being the first to report a story,” Zeman writes.
Full article here.
Send Engadget the bill. Payable on demand.
If I had $5m Apple Shares I would hope I wouldn’t have had such a knee jerk reaction to the news. Even if it was delayed I would have probably had to take a minute to decide if I thought it was the time to sell. That said, I’m in position to ever have that many shares so I can’t really talk.
“Some are crying for an SEC investigation. According to a Business 2.0 blog, one shareholder sold 5 million shares within 10 to 15 minutes of seeing the post,” Zeman reports.
bunch of corporate sheep
Sorry but this is down to Engadget.
Knowingly publishing the contents of an internal Apple email without conducting any checks on it has got to be criminal.
I have always loathed Engadget – now more than ever. Same class of business as Microsoft…
Yeah, I had a trailing stop set for 5% and all my shares were sold. By the time I got the email, the stock was back up within a buck or so of the previous high. I’m not pleased. It must have dropped more than 3% though, since my stop was 5%. My shares went for $104.68 to $104.88. Now, nothing wrong with taking some money off the table, but a little blip like that really sucks for me. Guess I’ll have to get back in at $108 or so to make the ride to $120.
5 million shares? Dang, but that’s GOT to hurt with AAPL up (right now) by $1.12 to 108.46! If that guy/gal sold at the $103 bottom, there’s blood on the floor this morning.
The Art of making stories about nothing. It’s back at 108. Next!
“Lessons learned in Journalism 101, however, would have prevented the debacle.”
If only that was a required course in journalism. Seems news reports are generated without any fact checking of any kind EVERY FRICKIN’ DAY!
*[i’]Somebody* is going to get the deadly lawyers dressed in black turtlenecks on black jeans wearing a black suit holding a serving paper on one hand…and an M14 on the other. *shruggs*
Typical reporters.
Get the story out fast, to hell with accuracy.
I see this in the papers and TV too.
An investor’s best friend is the internet.
An investor’s worst enemy is the internet.
I don’t believe the story about the 5 million hsares anymore than I did the memo “leak”. I use the internet to facilitate trades and collect information. I DO NOT rely on bloggers for anything more than entertainment value, and that includes MacDailyNews. They are just as bad as the rumor mongers because they repeat the rumor. Tell a lie often enough and people accept it as true.
Engadget sucks, but what do you expect from a web site owned by AOL.
Anyone that sells 5m stock based on outhouse rumors deserves to take a bath. IMHO
Apple must be slated to do very well over the next several years ’cause MS is shelling out a whole lotta $$$ for anti-Apple propoganda lately.
Somebody made a sh#tload of $$ shorting Apple stock on that day–I wonder whether it was the same guy(s) who created the fake memo?
When in doubt, follow the money…
$200/share or bust.
It’s one thing for a Courts to say that Bloggers are Journalists.
It’s a vastly different thing to expect Bloggers to act like Journalists.
Engadget was going for hits. Verifying the source was the least of their worries.
If there was any justice in this world, Engadget would be facing a lawsuit right now.
“Duty bound to report to its readers, it filed a post.”
WTF does this mean? What about being duty bound to posting factual information?
What this really means is, they just wanted page hits and were willing to sacrifice confirmation to get a story up that would generate a lot of traffic.
FSJ had a hilarious take on the situation – claims it was a deliberate ploy to hurt bloggers (and Engadget’s Ryab Block in particular). Once again FSJ sounds all too plausible.
http://fakesteve.blogspot.com/2007/05/operation-blog-bash-swings-into-action.html
TAKE ENGADGET DOWN! (They’re pricks anyway.)
Typo – meant RYAN – sorry Ryab, I mean Ryan…
MDN magic word: never, as in never type too quickly…
Sounds like someone was manufacturing a “buying opportunity” to me. This is simple market manipulation. Engadget should be ashamed of themselves, and should give up their source. Call the SEC.
The “investor” was an idiot and deserves to lose money if he’s relying on bloggers for his portfolio management… And anyone who keeps selling off their Apple stock with every news story is an idiot anyway. Has it EVER stayed down?
If you have an automated thing set up to sell all of a stock if it dips by a certain percent, then you are asking for trouble (imho). We have seen Apple stocks ripple many times in the past to bizarre reactions to announcements, market speculation and product updates. If you haven’t learned anything by now, disable that automatic feature, or be forever doomed to make that mistake again and again.
If anything, if it drops below 5%, you should have been automatically BUYING stock, not selling it.
…right?
I bet you no Applelyte took any notice of it!
It is only hoax if Apple ships iPhone on schedule.
Just my $0.02
Y’all should read the comments posted on Engadget for this story. Frakkin’ hilarious. All the Mac-haters had a field day about “Fanboys” and how this would shut them up. Etc, etc., etc. Frakkin’ morons.
Anonymous: Check out”Why Doesn’t Microsoft Have A Cult Religion?” on the same site. Also some frakkin’ hilarious comments. There are some seriously disturbed people out there! No surprise.
http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2007/05/why_doesnt_micr.html
Whomever did this is obviously an idiot or a daytrader…Of course, these could be considered one in the same so…
Hmm…. people finally realizing that bloggers are NOT journalists????
“What are bloggers to do, however, when fed erroneous information that looks real? Their gut instinct is to post first, question later. Lessons learned in Journalism 101, however, would have prevented the debacle. It never hurts to pick up the phone and call a company rep to confirm the validity of the information.” —MDN
It “never hurts” to pick up the phone???!!! I would express it differently: It is the solemn responsibility of anyone who publishes information for public consumption to verify their information before publishing!
Every blogger in the universe now wants the same priviledges that real journalists enjoy. Fine, let them start acting like real journalists!
I posted this same thing on the Information Week site. Engadget made a huge mistake yesterday.
First, this “trusted source” obviously cannot be very high in Apple’s organization as anyone with that stature would have known the email was fake. Sorry, Engadget, but having some guy in the mail room shovel you emails just isn’t good enough. At least not with information this critical.
Second, you don’t publish a story saying Apple put out a press release without there being, you know, a press release.
Third, a rush to be first has its downsides, too, and Engadget must take responsibility for that. Live by the rushed story, die by the rushed story. I have no sympathy for them.
Finally, as others have stated, bloggers piss and moan about being “journalists”, so Engadget should be held to that standard.
@ No Squirt
Thanx for the link … the article was ok… (till they mentioned Enderle) but some of the comments were entertaining .. especially the one from the guy who said that the reason he would never switch to a Mac … was because of the “Mac Fanbois” …
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Talk about ignorance !
But in the end, accuracy is more important than being the first to report a story
Not to blogs it isn’t. Welcome to the Internet age.
“It is the solemn responsibility of anyone who publishes information for public consumption to verify their information before publishing!”
Please cc that to REUTERS, only applies to non anti-american stories though.
Engadget is crap, very little credibility. Next.
It is unfortunate that Engadget didn’t check the validity of the story before posting it.
When bloggers have been sued to reveal sources, they have invoked the First Amendment and, after battles, won the right to call themselves journalists.
However, if you want to be a journalist, then you need to act responsibly.
Next time there a blogger is dragged into the courts and claims First Amendment rights, you can bet that this incident will be cited as a reason that blogs are not news publications and bloggers are not journalists.
Thanks, Engadget, for giving blogers a big black eye.
Jeff wrote “The Art of making stories about nothing. It’s back at 108. Next!”
and ?
stock goes down because people sell, some people lost a lot of money !
@ohcrap
Dude, have you never looked at Apple stock over the last few years. It’s highly volatile.
If you had to put a stop then do at 10 % or more.
textbook….
iPhone delay hoax briefly sinks Apple stock by $4 billion
Thursday, May 17, 2007 – 10:24 AM EDT
Fidelity and Wellington increase stakes in Apple Inc.
Thursday, May 17, 2007 – 05:19 PM EDT
Fidelity Investments, the world’s largest mutual-fund company…
just more proof that investment firms are stupid, reactive NOT proactive, and DIRTY UNDERHANDED %@#& %!*^$
MDN magic word : expected
time to ride the wave.. BUY! BUY! BUY!
Some day from now, the endgaget domain will be for sale… and guess what… nobody will buy it. They are, like the magic word, history !
Journalist have been doing it for years and engadget was right to post it, they had insiders telling them it was right and apple didn’t get back to them on time so lesson is better to apologies than to ask for permission.
@ DogGone: Uh, yes, I have looked at Apple stock for quite a number of years. And I know it’s volatile. But 5% at $108 seemed reasonable. You know, 5% is the new 10%. I took my lumps, I just needed to complain a little about a rumor messing with my portfolio. I know you’ve heard it before, but I actually did start this ride at $13.02 for some of my shares. And I did the old, sell when it’s up several dollars over a week or so, and buy back when it drops a few dollars, picking up four or five shares each time. I’m happy with it, and I even bit the bullet this time and bought back at $108. Now I’ve made back about half of the amount I lost on that flip, but I’m confident it is going much higher still.
I’ve posted a poll at my site with some mildly entertaining, yet
sadly, possibly realistic options. Feel free to drop in and vote.
Can’t vote in this forum, but poll set up at edf, here it is.
Enjoy!
http://www.everydayfinance.blogspot.com
AAPLE News – How bad do you think the Fallout will be from
TheStreet.com’s errant report on the iPhone shortage and subsequent
tumble in Apple shares?
There will be no fallout whatsoever. Cramer’s antics and his blogs
partake in rumors, pump/dump and speculation. I would expect nothing
less.
There will be a mild reaction. TheStreet.com doesn’t have real
credibility to begin with, so this is a just a blip on the Radar
screen
There will be massive repraisals; Cramer will issue an official
apology, new controls and procedures will be implemented at
TheStreet.com
The SEC will investigate. Politicians will pounce on the opportunity
to attack another “rich guy” catering to “rich people” who trade
stocks and invoke legislation in an attempt to avoid a repeat, messing
with the 1st amendment and their usual antics
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