The stock is down a little bit more pre-market, $499.40, off $1.35.
From Testosterone Pit:
Icahn’s “No-Brainer” Goes To Heck (Manipulation Works Only Most Of The Time)
So things have been a little rough for our tech heroes the last few days. Yahoo reported Tuesday evening that revenues last quarter had dropped again from a year earlier. The stock got hammered after hours. VM reported that revenues were up 15%. Stock got hammered. Seagate reported that revenues were down 3.8%. Stock got hammered and ended 11.2% lower. But the standout was Apple. On Monday evening, it reported very uninspiring results.
Carl Icahn must have tossed and turned Monday night. Still reeling from his Apple losses, he was out there on Tuesday hyping the stock with all his might. They're all doing it, from Warren Buffett on down, guys with billions of play-money and a loud voice that bounces around the media in a myriad ways so that no one can escape their hype.
A whole industry has formed around them – the Buffett and Icahn watchers, whose recommendations, newsletters, and model portfolios claim to mirror the successes of the Great Ones. They entice the little guy to jump on the bandwagon and multiply the effects of the early movements to drive up the stock further.
These Great Ones buy quietly, which itself, given the amounts involved, moves the stock. Then carefully engineered rumors spread, which drive up the stock further. This is followed by an official disclosure – in Icahn’s case, on Twitter – which is picked up by all the Icahn watchers and the media, and the ensuing hoopla, the interviews, the quotes, the articles in The Wall Street Journal, the pithy pronouncements on Twitter drive up the stock further as individual investors jump into the fray. They all give the Great Ones an opportunity to proclaim why a company is a “no-brainer,” and why the stock should surge, or why a stock that swooned – like Apple – shouldn’t have....MORE
