Jay Somaney
Jay Somaney
Long/short equity, special situations, growth, hedge fund manager
jaysomaney.com
(204 followers)
Summary
Negative hit pieces on stocks are becoming increasingly common.
The uninitiated often get scared out of their investment by a hit piece.
Forewarned is forearmed.
I am not sure how many have noticed that almost at the end of every quarter/start of a new quarter, and before Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) is getting ready for their earnings, either DigiTimes or Nikkei Asian Review almost consistently come out with a negative piece on Apple.
It either talks about production delays, or supplier checks that are indicating some negative for Apple, Asian channel checks that spell doom and gloom for Apple or some other piece of news that is almost always negative or slanted in a negative light.
The conspiracy theorist in me always wonders, as do almost all the subscribers in my chat room, whether the dark-side players are planting these stories and making out like bandits when the shares of Apple invariably/inevitably get hit.
Or, it could be the good guys, even, that are desperate to buy a position in Apple, or add to it, that could be working with these sites as well.
Shares get hit, buy-in or add at lower levels or cover your shorts, whatever the situation might be.
Simple enough, no?
Take for instance this morning.
DigiTimes put out a story 45 minutes or so before the opening bell that said that a Chinese publication was claiming that issues with a lamination process of OLED panels would delay the launch of the new iPhone 8/X to October or November of this year.
Right off the bat, the stock got hit fairly hard in pre-market trading, dropping almost $2 per share in a heartbeat.
Three things jumped out at me, which are as follows:
Apple has not announced the date, so a delay is irrelevant, except for the perception that Apple will launch the new phone toward the end of September.
Secondly, as long as Apple does not miss the holiday season, a delay here or there shouldn't matter at all in the bigger picture.
Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, if those investors/traders, who got scared/fooled/shook/scammed out of their shares, had just taken the time to check and see other news from the Far East, they would have found that Hon Hai, aka Foxconn, announced a fantastic set of numbers this morning. Why is that relevant? Mainly because Foxconn is Apple's biggest supplier/OEM and could not possibly have had such an outstanding set of numbers if any of the news from DigiTimes' source was true.
http://seekingalpha.com/article/4060504-aware-constant-negative-hit-piece-stories-apple-ilk
Realist - Everybody in America is soft, and hates conflict. The cure for this, both in politics and social life, is the same -- hardihood. Give them raw truth.
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