“Has the ‘channel check’ become a criminal act?” Susan Pulliam asks for The Wall Street Journal.
“Wall Street analysts have been left bewildered in recent days, as federal prosecutors begin to home in on insider-trading cases that appear to involve routinely published information about public-company supply chains,” Pulliam reports. “Case in point: Apple Inc., one of the hottest stocks of the past year, for which an entire industry of well-known and obscure analysts and ‘expert network’ scramble to report every detail of the company’s undisclosed production plans.”
Pulliam reports, “The proliferation of such research raises questions about where prosecutors will draw the lines that define insider trading… A few weeks [ago], Rodman & Redshaw issued a report to clients that was picked up by a popular website that compiles such reports. ‘Rodman’s supply chain checks indicate that monthly iPad production volumes are not expected to exceed much beyond 2 million units into year end.’ The report went on to say that street estimates for Apple’s December quarter ‘may end up being a stretch goal.’ Apple shares dropped sharply on the news, closing at $308.03, compared to $316.65 the day before.”
Full article here
MacDailyNews Take: Nail ’em to the wall.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Dan K.” for the heads up.]