Jonathan Lebed: Stock Manipulator, S.E.C. Nemesis -- and 15 - New York Times:
"I was going over some old press releases about different companies.
The best performing stock in 1999 on the Nasdaq was Qualcomm (QCOM).
QCOM was up around 2000% for the year. On December 29th of last year,
even after QCOM's run from 25 to 500, Paine Webber analyst Walter Piecky
came out and issued a buy rating on QCOM with a target price of 1,000.
QCOM finished the day up 156 to 662. There was nothing fundamentally
that would make QCOM worth 1,000. There is no way that a company with
sales under $4 billion, should be worth hundreds of billions. . . . QCOM
has now fallen from 800 to under 300. It is no longer the hot play with
all of the attention. Many people were able to successfully time QCOM
and make a lot of money. The ones who had bad timing on QCOM, lost a lot
of money.
"People who trade stocks, trade based on what they feel
will move and they can trade for profit. Nobody makes investment
decisions based on reading financial filings. Whether a company is
making millions or losing millions, it has no impact on the price of the
stock. Whether it is analysts, brokers, advisors, Internet traders, or
the companies, everybody is manipulating the market. If it wasn't for
everybody manipulating the market, there wouldn't be a stock market at
all. . . ."