Ah, The Old Press Release Hoax Is Back
from the The-Wire dept
Among the artifacts of the last bubble that we’ve seen re-emerge of late is the phony exaggerated press release, designed to create an artificial pop in a company’s stock price. At least we thought that investors weren’t so gullible any more. Turns out, investors are still very susceptible to hype, as one company recently found out when a third party put out a false release saying it had signed a deal with a major company. By the time the company realized someone had put out a false report on them, their stock had already doubled. Perhaps investors can’t be blamed; after all, the press release looked legitimate, and had the deal been true, it would’ve been significant. This event seems reminiscent of when a fake press release was put out, claiming to be a warning from storage maker Emulex, back in August, 2000. That incident briefly knocked $2.5 billion off of the company’s market cap. That’s another big difference between now and then; the amounts we’re talking about with these things are much smaller.
Comments on “Ah, The Old Press Release Hoax Is Back”
Think big, start small
You’ve got to test the waters first to make sure the market is ready for mass-harvesting.
At least, we thought, that investors weren’t so gullible any more. Turns out, investors are still very susceptible to hype
there have been plenty of psychological studies that show 2/3 of people are essentially sheep. don’t let it come as a surprise to you that a majority of investors were, are and will continue to be susceptible to hype.
Re: Sheep?
“there have been plenty of psychological studies that show 2/3 of people are essentially sheep”
Sheep huh, is that the scientific terminalogy used. You sure it wasn’t “Tards”?
actually
Isn’t there a particular specialty in that? I mean, I think there is a subset of psychology that deals with group thought. It does appear to be very true that people, even normally intelligent ones, take on a sheep-like behavior when placed in a large group with even a remotely common goal. I wonder how thoroughly that effect has been studied, and what, if any, percentage of the population seems immune to it.
Sheep
Baaaaa.