There's one thing to be said about being in meetings all day - sometimes I can miss all the noise around an event until after the mess has been sorted out. Today, I missed all the drama around rumored Apple product delays until the hubbub was history. In case you were in meetings all day as I was, or live under a rock, but somehow maintain great Web access, the gist of the story was that a fake e-mail warning of delays to the iPhone and Leopard OS made its way around Apple internally, and was forwarded to tech news blog Engadget. The resulting story forced Apple stock to sharply dive, cutting away $4 billion in market value, only to see it eventually recover for the most part when the rumor was rescinded.Had I not already sold all my Apple stock (prematurely) a few weeks ago, I might have seen the intraday dive down from $107 to $103. I might have gritted my teeth over a potential loss of hundreds or even thousands of dollars. If I were paying attention and knew the rumors were false, maybe I would have even debated buying at the new "on sale" price. But neither of those things happened. It looke like it was truly much ado about nothing.
In the aftermath, we can be sure to see debate around what standard blogs should need in order to post rumors, and there will be investigations at Apple to see how their e-mail got compromised. There are already calls for an SEC inquiry and concerns over who could have benefited from the shenanigan. Even Valleywag, usually the villain in today's tech blogosphere, comes out looking like a rose in comparison to the normally excellent Engadget. They note, "Someone, who bought on the panic, made a serious profit on today's little blog embarrassment."
If only I had been the one to see through it.