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Comment by superplussed | Hacker News Reader

Dumb question: is buying a domain, posting a hoax story about a company on that domain, and then executing trades to take advantage of the fluctuation in that company's stock price illegal?

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It is a pump and dump mixed with fraud plus likely trademark and copyright violations imitating Bloomberg. It is certainly illegal.

EDIT:Fixed a typo.

First you pump then you dump. :)

Oops, typo. Although I am curious what a dump and dump would accomplish...

If you short the stock I believe the dump and subsequent dump would be in your favor.

If you had a bunch of puts, sufficient dumping might be enough to create a panic, and then the puts would be worth more than the loss from dumping.

Here is one example:

http://www.cnbc.com/id/100630626

http://www.ibtimes.com/why-did-gold-crash-april-2013-compute...

http://www.cnbc.com/id/100665045

I'm not sure, I wonder if The Onion has ever affected stock prices.

Journalism is generally exempted from securities regulations (if they are not trading). Comedy the same I presume.

I guess this explains the disclaimer in all of Fool.com's articles. The author of the article tends to disclose if he/she holds any positions.

It's actually a legal requirement as of a few years ago, for interests to be disclosed in the case of endorsements, or critical pieces on competition. If that interest isn't already clear.

https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-center/guidance/ftc...

Big difference with this scenario though as this article had an intention to deceive, the onion makes it very clear it is satire.

Yep.

Yup.

That's not even necessary. Look at Yelp's recent fun times. Nothing like a good unsubstantiated rumor to artificially inflate a stock price.

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