Are Blackberry Shares Being Manipulated?

An article was published at Benzinga.com on Saturday October 18th and reached Yahoo Finance via Reuters on the 20th before being repeated within a weekly highlights piece over the weekend before last. Also a Bloomberg video report featured a strategist suggesting an investment in BBRY options based on the rumor. The original story, which is based on an unconfirmed rumor, gained steam and influenced the trading in Blackberry (Nasdaq: BBRY). BBRY was up 12.2% through the publishing of my piece on October 29 from the $9.49 close on Friday October 17th. Compared to the 7.7% gain in the PowerShares QQQ (Nasdaq: QQQ) through the same span, that’s an important gain. So the story influenced the movement of the shares significantly. But, given that rumors of a Lenovo (OTC: LNVGY) acquisition of Blackberry (Nasdaq: BBRY) were smothered in the past by regulatory concerns, which I first raised to the attention of the public in my article A Blackberry - Chinese Company Merger Serves Apple and Maybe Hackers Too, then how could this latest story carry any weight? So is it a rouse then, and who is the “source familiar with the matter,” who the author references? Might someone be manipulating the shares of the stock, and if so, how do we play it? See my latest report on Blackberry here.

Since my report was published, Lenovo acquired Google’s (Nasdaq: GOOG) (Nasdaq: GOOGL) interest in Motorola, so BBRY shares seem to have lost their support.

Disclosure: I have taken a short position in Blackberry (BBRY) through put options as of Friday October 31. Please see our disclosures at the Wall Street Greek website and author bio pages found there. This article and website in no way offers or represents financial or investment advice. Information is provided for entertainment purposes only.