More on the Adware Advertiser Witchhunt

I’ve been traveling for 3 weeks, so I missed a lot of good stuff while I was gone. One posting I missed was this one, discussing which stocks should be shorted because of Elliott Spitzer’s enforcement action against Intermix Media.

This was a very interesting post for a couple of reasons. First, I’ve gotten a call from several equity traders seeking my perspectives about what they should do with their stock holdings. I’ve found this all a little amusing, because if I really had any valuable insights on stock trading, I’d be a lot quieter and a whole lot richer (and I wouldn’t still be holding on to some of my dot com stocks from the late 1990s).

Second, the referenced post was interesting because it shows how a pundit like Ben Edelman, who assiduously avoids offering his legal perspectives, can move the equity markets. (Notice how the trader put some new stocks on his short list simply because they were referenced in Ben’s report). Seeing equity traders respond to innuendo and ambiguous data reinforces just how important it is that we get some legal clarity on the topic of who is liable for what.