Tombet, it was only within the last few months that Mark Haynes noted that he owned shares in whatever stock the analyst mentioned. Mark also said that he'd had no idea the analyst was going to mention that specific company. That disclaimer, under those circumstances, was perfectly appropriate.
I don't know whether CNBC has written guidelines on ownership of stock vis-a-vis interview or not. In any event, I've never had any impression that anyone on the CNBC staff was, even indirectly, pumping and dumping. They all seem to have full integrity. I'm sure they'd be invited to leave if this were not true.
But what do you do if you're Joe Kernan and a company in which you own, say, 200 shares moves up 30% on takeover rumors? I'm sure you report it. It's not fair to the shareholders, or to the public who has seen the company move up, to not report on it. Objective reporting is the right thing to do in any case. And I'm sure we will NOT hear, in these circumstances, a prediction that the stock should double by the end of the week. We'll leave that to the contributors to the SI and Yahoo message boards. |
