Lyft CEO says ‘My bad’ after earnings typo sends stock up 60%

EinatYahav@lemmy.today to Not The Onion@lemmy.world – 278 points –
Lyft CEO says ‘My bad’ after earnings typo sends stock up 60%
theguardian.com
24

What's it called when you fuck up and accidentally make millions of dollars? Oh, right, fraud.

If a typo can change a stock this much then the whole stock market is fraud.

Noooo?! These guys wear suits and ties, so it's super cereal.

Eh, they're off hours traders anyway. They're gambling speculators by definition. Who cares about 'em.

The market is only real because people believe in it. Unless you plan to be on the board of a company, the stock is worth exactly the expected dividend, which most stocks no longer pay. There is no intrinsic value to a stock… people will pay you a spot price today only because of the expectation they will sell at a higher price later. Without that belief, there is no value.

Retail traders have zero chance against the big corps and hedgies. Manipulation is rife

If misreported data makes the system not work, that just means the system’s designed to work on real information not fake information.

How is a system supposed to know if self reported information is accurate or not? The stock market fluctuates based on bad info all the time.

In theory these kinds of disclosures are heavily regulated, and there are consequences for reporting incorrect info. I’m curious to see if that holds true here.

We had more concrete evidence of that for a long time.

He should have to pay a fine equal to twice what he would have earned from the stock increasing. Even if the stock plummets.

Don't fuck up your financial statements, dude.

For the first offense. Each subsequent offense should have the percentage double.

This could correct itself. Now the company’s financial reports are unreliable, and the uncertainty alone should drop the value of their stock. Risk has a negative monetary value, and these financial reports are now a source of risk.

He hasn't earned anything unless he sold while it's up and that would be public information.

Isn't the SEC going to investigate and charge them?

Maybe, but they will slap them on the wrist with a fine that costs less than they make in an hour and have a strongly worded letter sent to them saying don't do it again.

The SEC is milquetoast

So I wanted to know where the phrase milquetoast comes from bc it's a weird word and thought I should share my findings bc it is cool.

from Caspar Milquetoast, character created by U.S. newspaper cartoonist H.T. Webster (1885-1952) in the strip "The Timid Soul," which ran from 1924 in the "New York World" and later the "Herald Tribune." By 1930 the name was being referenced as a type of the meek man.

Good stuff there. ❤️ the username too😄

The mistake was fixed within 24 hours and it was released during after hours when no stock trading is technically supposed to happen. It's on you if you trade outside of the official trading hours. There are also laws protecting companies from being punished for having wrong forward looking statements. The guy in charge of the earnings presentation got fired though, so there's that.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2024-02-14/lyft-had-a-typo

By bad guys, after accidentally inflating the price for my friends.

“My bad… This was a bad error, but it was one zero.”

Not quite.. it was an error of 450 basis points. An error of 1000%