“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!