Slashdot Log In
The Anatomy of Pump n' Dump Stock Spamming
Posted by
Zonk
on Sun Jan 21, 2007 04:34 PM
from the ugly-in-there dept.
from the ugly-in-there dept.
giorgiofr writes "Laura Frieder and Jonathan Zittrain have analyzed pump n' dump spam activity in their paper 'Spam Works: Evidence from Stock Touts and Corresponding Market Activity'. Unbelievably, it appears that spammers are able to achieve a 5% gain on pumped stock before dumping it, along with a dramatic increase in transaction volume of the stock. From the synopsis: ' We suggest that the effectiveness of spammed stock touting calls into question prevailing models of securities regulation that rely principally on the proper labeling of information and disclosure of conflicts of interest to protect consumers, and we propose several regulatory and industry interventions. Based on a large sample of touted stocks listed on the Pink Sheets quotation system, we find that stocks experience a significantly positive return on days prior to heavy touting via spam. Volume of trading responds positively and significantly to heavy touting.'"
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Full
Abbreviated
Hidden
Loading... please wait.
Invest in spam-filter companies ;) (Score:5, Insightful)
Thereby they reinforce this strange mafia way of making money and worst of all they make sure that loads of spam will keep on putting even more pressure on the internet.
The only sensible conclusion I am able to draw from this is that it probably will pay of to invest in the spam-filter companies
Re:Invest in spam-filter companies ;) (Score:5, Insightful)
There are two issues here. One is the number of idiots who buy the stock based on the spam. The other is the number of people who either: a) assess the stock on its merits and decide to buy; b) assess the SPAM on its merits, as you suggest, and decide to take advantage of it.
I suppose one could consider spam stock touting another way of learning about what's available on the stock market. In that respect, it's like an "uninvited stock ticker". Some people are probably viewing it that way.
It's like the 9/11 airline stock scam or the stock scam Le Chiffre uses in the James Bond film. There's always a way to make money on somebody else's stupidity or misfortune - especially if you engineer the stupidity and misfortune.
Parent
Re:Invest in spam-filter companies ;) (Score:4, Interesting)
Here's the thing I don't understand. If a group of people get together and buy the same stock, and tell their friends to buy the stock, so long as none of them are prohibited from doing so due to conflict of interest, where is the illegality? If a group of people get together and buy stock and tell everyone on the Internet to buy it, where is the illegality? If a company IPOs, issues their executive officers stock, and tells investors everywhere to buy their stock, where is the illegality?
Parent
Re:Invest in spam-filter companies ;) (Score:5, Interesting)
The rule is in place simply because it makes the game fair, fun, and profitable. We could change it if we desired, if we all decided that we wanted our stock markets to be most profitable to spammers.
Parent
"Follow the money"? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:"Follow the money"? (Score:5, Insightful)
Except, you've missed the point on the very reason these scams do make money - Because people buy these stocks realizing them as pump-n-dump scams, hoping to trade out in time.
Pretty easy, actually...
1) Get stock spam
2) See if the price has gone up in the past week. If so, forget it. If not, continue o step 3
3) Buy a few thousand shares
4) Watch the price carefully.
5) The second it starts going up, sell sell sell! Don't try to time it for best profit, dump ASAP.
6) Profit!
So, by "following the money", they'd potentially catch honest traders as well as those running the scam.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:"Follow the money"? (Score:5, Informative)
>
> You could also short the stock at this point...
You've just sent anybody who understands stocks into gales of laughter. You don't understand how shorting a stock works. Shorting a stock requires that you borrow shares from a broker who has shares available to be borrowed. You then sell the shares and leave the money with the broker as collateral for the borrowed shares, plus a little more out of your own pocket as margin. If the stock goes up, you must supply the broker with more collateral money (that's called a margin call). When you decide to close out the short, or if you're forced to by a margin call when you don't want to come up with more cash, you buy the stock, give it to the broker to replace the borrowed shares, and reclaim your money. All this depends on a broker having shares he's willing to let you borrow. The chances of scam penny stocks like this being available to borrow from any broker is absolutely nil. These stocks simply cannot be shorted.
Chris Mattern
Parent
Re:"Follow the money"? (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:"Follow the money"? (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, when the SEC goes over the records and sees that I have made a large amount of money on this now-"corrupted" issue, was I simply an investor who saw an opportunity based on what I perceived as - and, in fact, was once the spam was sent out - public information, or was I one of the scammers? You and I (since I just told you and we're assuming I'm being truthful) know that I picked up the stock only after the scam was initiated. The SEC, on the other hand, can't tell if I was simply lucky or if I timed my purchase based on foreknowledge that the scam was being initiated at that time on that day.
In other words, if a scammer changes the timing of their purchase to occur after the spam has gone out, large profits could still be realized thanks to the naive and the opportunistic who subsequently receive the e-mail.
Of course, even the purchases made before the scam could be masked to a large extent by giving tips to a few people one knows will keep their mouths shut (if not to the SEC then at least to other "investors" before the scam) and having them buy the issue.
In short, it's a problem that's not easily solved.
Parent
Re:"Follow the money"? (Score:5, Insightful)
In theory you could write a few lines of java/lisp/perl into your favorite automated trading platform and seek out the patterns of the spammers taking their position before they start pumping. That is, if they traded on some "real" exchange you could. In the "pinks sheets" there are no market makers, frequently no level 2 quotes, etc. Not enough data to easily find the patterns. As others have pointed out, this is also what makes it hard to prosecute the pumpers, they data trail is just too thin.
Parent
Re:"Follow the money"? (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You're the dump part.
I assure you, you can try to buy those stocks, but you won't make money.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
If you get the e-mail, and are interested, would you not look at the stock history? You know it's a pump-and-dump scam, and if the stock's gone up in the last, say, day by, say, 5%, would you bother to do it, knowing that the pump has already occurred?
On the other hand, if the stock HASN'T moved in the past few days, is it ethicaly OK to jump in, and right back out when it reaches a 5% increase?
Re:"Follow the money"? (Score:4, Insightful)
If you have money to play around with, I think a better idea would be to determine how the spammers select stocks that look like good pump and dump opportunities and buy into a few of them before they get selected in the hopes that they will someday be pumped. There has to be some relatively simple algorithm they use which accounts for price, trade volume, etc. . .
That way, you wouldn't really be a part of the plan, but you could profit from it passively with little or no possible criminal liability. It could just be a part of your normal investment system.
Does a spam email that is obviously a pump and dump scam expose you to any liability as a co-conspirator, say, if you follow up on it? How do people know you weren't following what you thought was a legitimate tip? And how about the companies involved? What happens to them when they see a huge stock price increase that blows away in a month? What kind of havoc does that wreak on the employees of that company?
Anyway, I think the best idea is to ultimately leave the whole thing alone. Let Spam Assasin do its job and don't get too curious about the shit that ends up in you Junk folder. You can't cheat an honest man as they say, so the best defense is probably to use your instincts and steer clear.
Parent
Re:"Follow the money"? (Score:5, Interesting)
I seriously considered trying to beat the spammers, buy the day before they were buying, sell at the high.
That is until I talked to my attorney friend, who convinced me the risk wasn't worth it, that if you did get investigated for doing this, you'd have to work pretty damn hard to convince them that you had nothing to do with the Pump and Dump scheme, and that it was a grey area if you can profit off a pump and dump (even if you had nothing to do with it).
I still think it's a good idea.
Ryan Stultz
Parent
Once, maybe. (Score:3, Interesting)
Profiting once, maybe. .... possibly.
Twice, well
Three times? Get the warrants and taps.
This is where "data mining" would come in. You know the stocks, you know who profited, you just have to find the connections. Even if the SEC cannot handle it, the FBI should be able to.
Perhaps Tax Evasion is the way to get them... (Score:3, Insightful)
God forgive me, but.... (Score:3, Interesting)
I mean, the paper has about 20 pages of analysis, a couple of pages of references, and, what?, something like 15 pages of statistics. More than enough to start working a model.
Re:God forgive me, but.... (Score:5, Interesting)
If a couple of people do what you describe, they will be feeding from the same trough as the image spammers, taking the same profits, scamming the same people. This will decrease the utility to the image spammers, because they'll be doing all the work but only getting some fraction of the gains. Eventually, they're likely to give up.
It's entirely possible this will settle into a steady-state of "no stock spam", since it will cease to be a big gain for any particular person and anybody can get in on the fun.
I'm in no hurry because even disregarding legality issues, some or all of these people will eventually be burned. But it might work for a bit.
Parent
Re:God forgive me, but.... (Score:4, Insightful)
There are plenty of other ways to make better e-investment.
My name is Kikon Vizirmarabu. I'm an ex-minister of the Nigerian government. I've got US$1.572.000.053 (ONE FIVE HU...ERR...LOTS) and I need a trusted US partner for a special operation. If you are interested please leave me your email.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
As a perfect example, read this about a stock tipping newsletter [thebusinessonline.com]
or, the Story of Doris [fool.co.uk], for further elucidation.
As someone who is subject to NASD regulation... (Score:5, Interesting)
We have to request permission before we buy & sell pretty much any listed security, just to satisfy our internal compliance people who in turn have to report to The Feds.
So why on earth is it so hard for The Feds to track who purchases larges quantities of these securities before such solicitations are made, and who conveniently dump shortly before these same shares crash? After all, we're only talking 5% here! There must be large sums of money whizzing about...
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Seems like a losing game all around.
Re:As someone who is subject to NASD regulation... (Score:4, Interesting)
Of course, if these spammers average one of these scams per week (@~5% return/scam) and re-invest all of their funds in each successive scam, that theoretically adds up to roughly 1200% return/year
It'd probably just be far more effective to detect these spams and warn the suckers before they trade. In other words, design a system with postini and other anti-spam mechanisms to aggregate these type of spams, parse them, and ***WARN*** the potential buyers (suckers) through etrade and other electronic intermediares (that the unsophisticated buyers are likely using) that they're about to buy a stock that is almost certainly being manipulated (with more than just the typical legalese one sees these days)...
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
-jcr
Why there is spam, how to get rid of spam (Score:3, Insightful)
- A half-convincing scheme
- Half-witted people gullible enough to be conned
To get rid of spam, get rid of the half-witted people. It shouldn't be that hard to educate computer users and explain to them that nobody will ever contact them to help them better their lives, just like nobody pop out of the blue and make their lives better in real-life. It's so simple even idiots can grasp the concept, and I fail to understand why nobody ever launched an educational campaign to explain this.
Once too few people respond to spam, then spamming isn't profitable anymore and spams disappear. The only true solution to the spam problem is a basic lesson in electronic social relationship.
Re:Why there is spam, how to get rid of spam (Score:5, Insightful)
Spam like that is successfull for the same reasons lotterys are successfull.
Not because people don't know, but because they're prone to greed.
Parent
Re:Why there is spam, how to get rid of spam (Score:5, Funny)
That said, all the people I know who p[l]ay the lottery claim to do it because the realization of the possibility of great wealth is entertaining enough that it is worth the expense, even if they never win.
Parent
Re:Why there is spam, how to get rid of spam (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually, that has a number of positive side effects:
1. The computer will be so slow that the user will have to realize that something is wrong with their system. A normal virus wouldn't monopolize the system because they don't want to alert the user. If they realize something is wrong then they'll either live with it or they'll fix it and perhaps learn something about security in the process.
2. The computer has a security hole in it (either a technical one or a human one), so they'll get infected eventually. Might as well have their computer being used to fold proteins for medical research rather than send out spam.
Where are the white hats when we need them?
Parent
Ride the pump'n'dumps, make big $$$ (Score:3, Interesting)
Here's how it would work - Write an app to model the behaviour of pump'n'dump stocks. Each time a pump spam comes in, enter the ticker symbol into the app. The app would then pull the current quote and some recent history through a yahoo finance API, then monitor the price in the background. The app would also need the original email, so it can perform some classification based on email headers, type of spam (image, text etc), time of day, sender IP address and subnet etc.
When the database starts to populate, set up a few genetic algos to paper trade.
It's possible that the genetic algos, before long, will start generating reliably good forecasts and recommendations, eg "buy immediately, sell if it drops 1%, sell if it gains 2.2%", and the paper trading will start heading clear north. That would be the time to jump on with real $$.
When the app is tuned well, someone with a few tens of thousands could make a reliable 50% return or more per year, by taking small salami slices from a large number of pumped stocks. Sadly, these slim margins would exclude smaller investors, since the trade fees would eat up all the gain.
It all depends on when you receive each given pump spam. If you get it early in the mail-out cycle, you can win, just so long as you get a return and sell well clear of the dump. If you get it late in the mail-out, you could short it instead. If you can't reliably determine where you are in the spamming mailout cycle, the returns would be tighter or nonexistent. The app could guess your position in the mailout cycle by determining how much growth happens, and how long it takes for the dump, after you receive the pump.
Re:Ride the pump'n'dumps, make big $$$ (Score:5, Informative)
And since the stocks being pumped are generally pink-sheet material, its tough to find shares available for borrowing, for the purpose of shorting. The pumpers intentionally pick illiquid stocks, because illiquidity (a) amplifies the effect of their pumping efforts, and (b) limits the ability of shorters to attenuate their pump & dump profits. (In this respect short sellers are like positive reactance in an AC circuit.)
Parent
People who buy stocks based on spam (Score:3, Insightful)
Give it a few years, it'll go the way of nigerian spams.
Re:People who buy stocks based on spam (Score:4, Funny)
You mean more common than ever?
Parent
Why is it unbelievable? (Score:3, Insightful)
Pump 'n Dump: A Howto by SCO (Score:4, Funny)
2. Sue IBM for stealing your code. Make sure to grab a lot of media attention.
3. Sell off stocks after everyone else buys, but before anyone realizes that you don't actually have any evidence that IBM stole code.
4. Profit!
Caveat emptor (Score:5, Interesting)
* The touting is not illegal in and of itself - most touters are even including disclosures about their own activities (it is, however, one of the authors' recommendations to nail some of them for breach of CAN-SPAM)
* These are not NASDAQ or NYSE stocks, and don't behave anything like that. Those are unknown, small stocks with very small trading volumes. The touter and the people he is fooling are often making up much of the trading activity in the period around the touting. They are also "penny" stocks, which "tick" in pretty large increments (percentagewise).
* Consequently, the only people likely to benefit or hurt are the touters and the people who bought into their messages (i.e. no "innocent bystanders")
It is unclear to me that this is a problem for the regulators, at least not from the point of view of protecting the "victims". After all, people are free to make bad choices and these are not fraud cases (the authors note that this is "investor irrationality"). There is, however, a negative impact on everyone else, because this sustains high spam levels. Probably the "CAN-SPAM direction" is the regulatory way to go, rather than something more specific related to touting of financial assets.
There is an old saying that goes caveat emptor - Let the Buyer Beware.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The spammer buys in, driving the price up. They then sell against some of the early suckers, who are left holding the bag. By this time the price has probably started falling already. Then the suckers eventually wise up and start selling, against the very thin market, which can depress the price even further.
It's entirely possible for a stock to wind up a lot lower than it started out after one of these schemes hits it.
Proof It Doesn't Work For Recipients (Score:5, Informative)
The guy's got records going back over 2 years. It's pretty interesting.
- Greg
The other side of the story... (Score:5, Informative)
The Phishers will phish usernames and passwords for brokerage accounts, or they will collect the information from personal users by means of a trojan. The criminals log into these accounts and schedule sell orders for whatever stocks they are holding, and schedule buy orders for the penny stock they are going to pump-n-dump. Then they walk away.
They execute the spam, eager traders read the spam, look at the account and see that volume of shares purchased have been bought up in the past n-hours and they jump in. The pumpers have bought their stock before hand and once the volume peaks, they dump. The account holders whose accounts were compromised are left holding the pumped-dumped stock...
The criminals are getting GOOD! They don't need to worry about transferring money out of the compromised brokerage accounts, they are stealing the money and laundering it all in the same step.
The big targets for the brokerage account takeovers are in Tiawan, the targets for the spam are American "day traders". Apparently, the Tiawanese accounts are big targets because all the business deals in China are written according to Tiawanese law, and all securities trading is handled out of there.
And it should be no big suprise that the criminal organizations behind the whole operations is the Russians.
I get them in email, but also... (Score:5, Interesting)
This isn't the first one of these I've gotten, either. I got a similar one a few months ago. I can't imagine that stock spam is worth mailing to people via USPS, but apparently somebody can.
Re:Short spammed stock (Score:5, Informative)
Most of these securities, traded on the Pink Sheets, are thinly traded at best. The secondary market is by no means liquid, at least what liquid means when we consider an NYSE or AMEX listed security.
So short selling, while the correct approach, wouldn't be viable in this market.
Parent
Re:Short spammed stock (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re:beware... (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't see why not - if it's been sent directly to millions of people's inboxes, how much more public can it be? All you'd have to do to cover yourself is document when you received the email, so you can prove that you only bought after the email went out.
You can't be guilty of insider trading if you have no connection to the company and no source of real inside information. This spam is never based on real inside info.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:The great thing about these schemes... (Score:5, Insightful)
http://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/06/otcpin
Parent
Re:The great thing about these schemes... (Score:5, Informative)
Spend a few bucks and see if you can get a short position on one of these pump and dump penny stocks in a reasonable period of time.
Parent
Re:The great thing about these schemes... (Score:4, Informative)
I doubt that you can sell short on OTC stocks. On the real market, being able to sell short is not something you can just "do". You need to have a broker that will loan you the stocks. (Selling short works by you saying, "loan me xxx shares of this stock and I'll give them back to you in a few days". You then sell them and then re-buy them at the lower price, and pocket the difference. Or lose massive amounts of money if the stock goes up.) To get the stock loaned to you, you have to have a brokerage account with the ability to buy on margin (and then you can only use a certain percentage of your margin to sell short). Then, you can only short-sell when the stock is not falling (which means you need to plan ahead; you can't just read about a company going bankrupt and then short 10000 shares of its stock).
So it's not just "sell short and profit", it's actually a difficult thing to do, and it's heavily regulated. I don't know how it works for OTC stocks though == if you get a friend to loan you the shares, then you could be all set.
Finally, 5% is a good one-day return (it's a good 6-month return, too), but you need to factor in how much it costs to trade. If it's $0.01 per share to buy (and the same to sell), and the share is priced at $0.03, then your 5% gain becomes a net loss.
So be careful with penny stocks. Your investment strategy is a great way to lose tons of money.
Parent
Re:One way to stop it... (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent