Just as Muddy Waters confirmed it did not send such a tweet about Audience, so too did Andrew Left, the California-based investor who runs Citron, said his company did not send a message about Sarepta.
The twin incidents targeted a pair of Nasdaq stocks that are not among the most actively traded on a daily basis, showing how certain company shares are vulnerable to information posted on social media networks, even if the information is misleading.
“You need a more volatile stock for this kind of manipulation – obviously if you were to try it on IBM it wouldn’t work,” said Joe Saluzzi, co-manager of trading at Themis Trading in Chatham, New Jersey.
The tweet, with the user name “@citreonresearc,” alleged that drug trial results from the biopharmaceutical company had been tainted and doctored, according to screen shots of the posting captured by Twitter users.
Matt, a trader in San Diego who did not want to give his last name, but who goes by the handle @given2tweet on Twitter, said, “There’s a real severity to that tweet.
The company, which has a market cap of about $692 million, is volatile, moving more than 1 percent in six of the past seven sessions.
Audience went public in May 2012 and has a market cap of $254 million as of Tuesday’s closing price, rising about 15 percent so far this year.
Link: http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/business/a/-/tech/16031129/second-twitter-hoax-in-two-days-smacks-another-stock/