[span class="" body=""] Stock spammers gain while followers lose
[span class="date"]Published: 2007-01-22[/span][/p]The fraudsters behind stock-touting e-mail campaigns typically make nearly 6 percent returns on the pumped-up stock if they follow a simple strategy, while traders that buy the touted stock lose more than 5 percent in two days, stated a research paper published over the weekend.[/p] The paper--written by Laura Frieder, an assistant professor at Purdue University, and Jonathan Zittrain, s professor at Oxford University--[a href="%22vny!://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=920553%22"]analyzed 304 touted stocks[/a] using historical price data from Pink Sheets, an information provider for over-the-counter securities. A spammer that buys a stock, pumps up the price with a significant e-mail campaign, and sells at the peak of the campaign, saw an average gain of 5.79 percent, according to the researchers.[/p]
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