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A comment on Twitter shares drop as Salesforce reported to be out of the bidding process.

Re:Twitter shares drop as Salesforce reported to be out of t... by niftich on Friday October 14, 2016 @01:55PM (#12709878)
I love these 'rumors' and using terms like 'walked away' juxtaposed against one another.

Wouldn't it be beneficial to start all sorts of rumors about big players wanting to buy Twitter and then when every single one of them says they're in fact not interested, the value plunges and the actual interested buyer can pick them up on the cheap? Is this legal, provided no insider info was used? Doesn't this happen all the time?

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Re:Twitter shares drop as Salesforce reported to be out of t... by CapitalistCartr on Friday October 14, 2016 @02:12PM (#12710013)
Probably, under SEC Section 9, but its hard to prove. You'd have to show that specific people started the rumors, rather than merely repeated them, and a chain from them to those that profited.
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Re:Twitter shares drop as Salesforce reported to be out of t... by potatolicious on Friday October 14, 2016 @02:02PM (#12709927)
Yeah, what you describe is illegal - it's market manipulation.
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Re:Twitter shares drop as Salesforce reported to be out of t... by ProAm on Friday October 14, 2016 @04:08PM (#12710719)
Being illegal and getting caught are two very different things.
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Re:Twitter shares drop as Salesforce reported to be out of t... by mholmes680 on Friday October 14, 2016 @02:03PM (#12709935)
its illegal if you short said stock prior to starting the rumors, and then profitting from the outcome. "pump and dump".
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Re:Twitter shares drop as Salesforce reported to be out of t... by justinrstout on Friday October 14, 2016 @02:09PM (#12709984)
Technically, a "pump and dump" is the opposite of what's being described here. This would be a "poop and scoop".

http://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/poopandscoop.asp

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Re:Twitter shares drop as Salesforce reported to be out of t... by mholmes680 on Friday October 14, 2016 @02:11PM (#12710005)
thats awesome. I didn't know there was a name.
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Re:Twitter shares drop as Salesforce reported to be out of t... by stale2002 on Friday October 14, 2016 @03:07PM (#12710367)
This is rumored to be what is going on.

Fake acquisitions created for the purpose of driving up share price, during a time period when twitter employees are allowed to sell.

Got to allow twitter employees to cash out somehow.

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Re:Twitter shares drop as Salesforce reported to be out of t... by bigethan on Friday October 14, 2016 @03:12PM (#12710393)
This all happened during a time when employees were _not_ allowed to sell stock.
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Re:Twitter shares drop as Salesforce reported to be out of t... by the_watcher on Friday October 14, 2016 @04:50PM (#12710997)
Twitter employees can't currently sell stock? I was unaware of this.
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Re:Twitter shares drop as Salesforce reported to be out of t... by murph on Saturday October 15, 2016 @03:01PM (#12715224)
They can only trade one month out of three. Specifically, they can trade immediately after quarterly earnings.

This is pretty common amongst similar companies.

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Re:Twitter shares drop as Salesforce reported to be out of t... by jsprogrammer on Friday October 14, 2016 @03:37PM (#12710532)
Is there a rolling window?
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Re:Twitter shares drop as Salesforce reported to be out of t... by netik on Friday October 14, 2016 @03:54PM (#12710635)
Yes, there was a stock sales window when I worked there and I assume there still is now.

Most publicly traded companies have lockout periods if you have access to "insider information." Given that Twitter is (was) fairly transparent about company financials, this is probably still true.

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Re:Twitter shares drop as Salesforce reported to be out of t... by siculars on Friday October 14, 2016 @02:03PM (#12709933)
This. I have no doubt one of the aforementioned suitors, or some other, will conveniently step forward and strike a deal with Twitter in the $20-30 per share range.
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Re:Twitter shares drop as Salesforce reported to be out of t... by mholmes680 on Friday October 14, 2016 @02:09PM (#12709987)
I think you're right, but $20 - $30 is waaay too big an estimate here. I think its more like $20-24.

...maybe a foreign company at this point...

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Re:Twitter shares drop as Salesforce reported to be out of t... by jowiar on Friday October 14, 2016 @04:11PM (#12710740)
How do you justify that price, though? It involves a whole lot of growth that isn't really there. Google and FB are probably the only companies that could turn Twitter profitable, but probably only at a point that justifies a sale price of around $15.
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Re:Twitter shares drop as Salesforce reported to be out of t... by harryh on Friday October 14, 2016 @04:25PM (#12710818)
A lot of people think that twitter could relatively easily be made profitable by significantly cutting engineering staff.

http://brontecapital.blogspot.co.uk/2016/10/some-comment-on-...

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Re:Twitter shares drop as Salesforce reported to be out of t... by duaneb on Friday October 14, 2016 @04:33PM (#12710889)
Yea, people miss the fail whale.
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Re:Twitter shares drop as Salesforce reported to be out of t... by harryh on Friday October 14, 2016 @04:57PM (#12711047)
The vast majority of current twitter engineers have nothing to do with keeping fail whales at bay.
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Re:Twitter shares drop as Salesforce reported to be out of t... by duaneb on Friday October 14, 2016 @05:21PM (#12711171)
Isn't that the whole point of hiring engineers? To keep your service running? It's not going to maintain itself.
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Re:Twitter shares drop as Salesforce reported to be out of t... by harryh on Friday October 14, 2016 @05:59PM (#12711433)
Isn't that the whole point of hiring engineers?

No. If all twitter cared about was keeping the existing service running they could do it with 1/10th the current technical staff.

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Re:Twitter shares drop as Salesforce reported to be out of t... by the_watcher on Friday October 14, 2016 @04:54PM (#12711026)
Pretty sure that Google or Facebook could handle the scale Twitter operates at without the same headcount.
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Re:Twitter shares drop as Salesforce reported to be out of t... by duaneb on Friday October 14, 2016 @05:22PM (#12711180)
If I had google behind me, I could also leverage ridiculous technology. Both are larger than I am (and twitter is), so this is not surprising.
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Re:Twitter shares drop as Salesforce reported to be out of t... by harryh on Friday October 14, 2016 @04:21PM (#12710790)
I will bet you $500 that this doesn't happen within the next 90 days.
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