The $12.5 Billion Tweet | Hacker News Reader

The $12.5 Billion Tweet

ted.me

20 points_pius15 comments

I hate to pour cold water on this, but the tweet wasn't the value here : It was the announcement itself. Making it in the newspaper (as would have been done in the past) would have been just as effective. Or via Bloomberg (on their terminals).

OTOH, adding the detail about talking to the CEO is a little odd : Is the implication that he's trading on information that he got from a private conversation? The whole area is a little murky, I guess, because the intention to buy a block should also be material market-affecting information, but somehow it's not against the rules.

I didn't get your point. Of course the tweet isn't worth a damn, but the information is. Just like newspaper as you said.

But, since he chose Tweeter to disclose those news, his tweet, in fact, is worth $12.5B

Just adding another thing: what's to be contested in this article is if the tweet was the only thing that leveraged Apple's stocks to those values. Of course it may have been replicated everywhere, but was really just those few characters that generated that boom?

A well known investor saying, "I bought a lot of AAPL because I think it's undervalued," caused the boom.

The significance is (or should be) that he chose to use twitter instead of the newspaper or the Bloomberg terminals.

His tweet was carried on Bloomberg terminals thanks to the Twitter integration, so he essentially announced to anyone with a terminal even though he was using Twitter.

Until the site comes back online, here is the tweet: https://twitter.com/Carl_C_Icahn/status/367350206993399808

Does anyone on here know whether this was in fact posted as 'chatter' via Bloomberg terminals before the tweet or not.

Surely there's a Wall Street guy with access to a terminal on HN.

Isn't it more accurate to call it a $12.5 billion carefully timed leak? Stock market should work on properly assessed value, but more often than not, works on tidbits of info (legitimately derived or otherwise) that extrapolate value.

It's a Kessler syndrome for trades.

Let's see what happens when the market opens tomorrow.

Well ok, but how can you prove the correlation ?

That's the point. Of course the tweet may have been replicated everywhere as important news does. Every newspaper should, in fact, repost it, but was really just the tweet what peaked the stock's values?

I think you meant prove the causation. I can prove they're correlated: they both happened!

You're right that it's always good to be skeptical about extreme claims, but I think in this case it's pretty reasonable to assume that AAPL stock jumping when a famous investor announces "I bought a billion dollars of this stock and it's still undervalued" isn't a coincidence.

From Ichan's Twitter bio: "Some people get rich studying artificial intelligence. Me, I make money studying natural stupidity."

Ichan probably foresaw the impact of his tweet. He probably made millions, and will make a few more million by taking a short position on AAPL in the coming days.

Someone wanted to one up the 4 million dollar complain call... http://www.inc.com/ron-burley/4-million-complaint-call.html

Fictitious value? Like Dutch tulip bulbs, it depends upon the gullibility of the public.

So he created a bubble. A least he disclosed his position, se he's not liable.

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