Twitter shares surged this morning as traders rapidly spread a report from "Bloomberg" that "Twitter Attracts Suitors." However, in Avon-esque manner, the story is completely fake, via a website whose doman 'bloomberg.market' was created just 4 days ago. Prices then fell back. This is what the 'markets' have come to now...
The fake site...from Bloomberg.market domain with a mispelling of the former CEO's name (here) [5]
[6]
The reaction: algos loved it - spiked stocks... then someone read the report...
[7]
Why would anyone do this? Well someone loaded up in size on very short-dated TWTR Calls yesterday...
[8]
So to be clear: with the stock trading around $35, someone bought around 400 lots (400,000 shares worth) of $37 strike calls that expire in 3 days (at a cost between 21c and 30c) which were all dumped into the ramp today at between $1 and $2)!
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Back to work. $TWTR [9] pic.twitter.com/wD1dlLcQXm [10]
— Fed Porn (@FedPorn) July 14, 2015 [11]
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To be sure, a 5 second whois [12]check of http://bloomberg.business [13] reveals that the website was created 4 days ago...
The name server is dns1.namecheaphosting.com - clearly Mike Bloomberg would never stoop so low...
But algos always react to headlines first, ask questions later.
In any case, if you got stopped out on your TWTR short due to the market spike confirming the Idiot Algo Hypothesis, please complain to the Modern Markets Initiative.
