The kind of deliberate manipulation of stock prices is more criminal than the possible accounting irregularities.
Some disgruntled employee with literally no credible evidence or source makes a generic statement and these financial news outlets print it. Shame on them. They should be charged if this is a lot of nonsense...the ex employee and Dow Jones owned Marketwatch. You can’t just say this stuff without consequences. This is real money people lose. The same happened with GE last week.
CNBC does the same thing. No due diligence...just start reporting bearish news because that’s what gets viewers. Stocks going down is soooo much better for clicks and TV viewers that they’ve lost all form of honor or credibility in their reporting.
Same with AAPL. A few years ago was the worst during iPhone 6 and iPhone 7. Mysterious ZERO credibility “supply checks” say iPhone is struggling to sell, stock drops and Apple reports good numbers that negate it, but damage was done. No named source, just “people familiar” with the situation.
This manipulation is criminal and big institutions are behind it in many cases, particularly with the fake news.