SEC Halts Trading on Spam Driven Stocks

goombah99 writes "The SEC has taken action to halt transactions on spam-touted stocks. Presumably this opens an opportunity for denial of service attacks on stocks. However, to be effective spam generally must target penny stocks with historically low volumes and thus the actual capitalized market impact or effect on the companies for a temporary shutdown can be expected to be negligible and transient. One example was given of a touted apparel stock jumping from 6 cents to 45 cents over a period of days before settling down to ten cents a share and near 65,000 or about $6500 in transactions (an eighth of the peak share volume, and a 50th of the peak transaction value). In other words, the market distortion of a brief shutdown, even if it were a DOS attack, would be massively less than the integrated spam surge. The thing I found surprising was that for this to be an effective measure with human oversight then the number of such events must be relatively small in number. From the amount of spam I get I'd have guessed it was a tidal wave."

What spam?

[Seumas]

I don't understand what "spam" the SEC is discussing, here. Didn't we eliminate spam a few years ago when congress passed the CAN-SPAM Act?

And if we're going to halt transactions during periods of heavy spam for a particular stock, why not halt transactions during periods in which pundits in print, radio and television are promoting or demoting particular stocks? Or, even better, how about we just not worry about it in the first place because anyone that is stupid enough to base their investment decisions on email campaigns should suffer their own stupidity.

Re:Readability?

[Anonymous Coward]

Your IQ index: 80

Ideally, you should have an IQ in the triple digits to understand ./. The higher the score, the easier it'll be for you.

Re:Readability?

[Anonymous Coward]

Let it never be said that you are a little bit anal about spelling and grammar...

Ready to explode

[psaunders]

From TFA:

The SEC said it launched an enforcement effort to protect investors from potentially fraudulent spam e-mail promoting small company stocks with phrases like, "Ready to Explode," "Ride the Bull" and "Fast Money."

Now, Fast Money I get. But if I saw the phrase "Ready to Explode" in spam, to me that would suggest something pretty far from small company stocks.

And "Ride the Bull" is something else entirely...

Re:Pro-spam server

[symbolset]

They have this. It's called hotmail.

Re:Readability?

[Siker]

I second that opinion. This test is just another lowest common denominator search tool. It makes it easier to write text for children, which is good if you're writing for children, but perhaps not so good if you're writing for adults. Remember, to reach the sky you must aim for the stars. If you instead aim for the smallest child you can see, I think you're not doing so well.

And not only because you're aiming at innocent children. :)

Re:What spam?

[hugorxufl]

Crap, so, what am I supposed to do with all of my shares in HRL (Hormel)?