And then you get charged for fraud, SEC doesn't take these things lightly... with this much public attention you'd have to be crazy to try to pull of a scam like that hoping to get the money without showing any proofs to the claims...
I don’t know enough to comment on that, but the point is that so long as they are based on a shred of truth, even if over emphasized, it is hyperbole not fraud.
It can't be that hard if you have some credibility you are willing to sacrifice. If this report turns out to be complete BS, they still could have made over 10% return in a single day by the way the market reacted today.
they really better genuinely believe that this is true, and have lotsa evidence - or the fact that they stand to gain financially is going to be used to hit them very, very hard.
Alot of people just lost money, if it's for reasons - they will suck it up. If it's because "you made it up" then they will get their pounds of flesh, and not from the numb bits.
GE was founded 130 years ago, they've been through some shit and one of the most stable and well-known brands in the history of America if not the world. We're not talking about Uber here.
Nobody with any capital in significant amounts is going to take this report at face value. They're going to investigate the claims on their own before they make any moves.
Roughly $7 billion in value disappeared from GE's market cap today. People are certainly going to investigate this more and the stock will move in one direction or another depending on the validity of the report, but regardless of the ultimate outcome significant capital was moved around today which presented an opportunity to make a lot of money.
The market moved too quickly for the parties acting to have had time to actually digest the merits of the report. The market moved because the people who released the report had credibility.
I think you're putting a bit too much faith in due diligence for a market that is largely run by algorithms. There was some Google traffic for "GE fraud" right before market open and then search traffic spiked at 10:40am.[1] Now look at the trajectory of GE's share price this morning.[2]