Dear Volkswagen Stock Spammer: You Are Dumb

I came across another "leak" in my spam blocker program today. It was letting through a series of messages from another pump and dump stock spammer.

This one is different than the others though. This poor fellow is trying to manipulate the price of Volkswagen shares.

Aktientipp am Abend

VW schluckt MAN

VW Kurse nicht mehr zu stoppen!

W K N 766400
I S I N  DE0007664005
175,75 Euro
Wochenziel: 190 Euro
Jahresziel zum 31.12.2007 430 Euro

Charttechnisch die Aktie des Jahres!
Empfehlung: S T R O N G   B U Y

www.volkswagen.de

Es empfiehlt der Europ-Aktien-Club
M. Winter

Here's the problem with this scheme.

Volkswagen has a market cap of about 50 billion euros and trades over 2 million shares each day.

Let's just say it takes a 20% increase in volume to make a useful impact on a stock's share price. That would mean 400,000 shares at about 175 euros each. That's 70 million euros or about 100 million US dollars.

That spam is going to have to convince an awful lot of people to buy an awful lot of VW.

While there is some evidence that pump and dump spam work, scammers usually target penny stocks with tiny valuations. A few hundred thousand dollars in unexpected purchases might be enough to get a tiny stock to move upwards.

The prospect of such tactics working on a large-cap company like Volkswagen is not very good to put it lightly.

Unless this spammer is actually engaged in some super-genius plan that goes completely over my head, he seems to be a total idiot.

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