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While market participants should strive to understand a company before investing in it, many of them don't. For example, there are a number of "Cramericans" out there who buy stocks blindly. This became quite clear this week as it appears followers of Jim Cramer's show Mad Money bought shares of ACU because of an errant article.
CNBC correctly reported that Cramer recommended a company by the name of Accuride on his show last Friday night. But CNBC mislabeled the company's symbol, referring to it as ACU instead of ACW. They corrected the error a few days later, but not before some blind followers bid up ACU's shares!
So now what? Should value investors sell, on the expectation that Cramericans will cause the stock to drop in the future once they realize their mistake? I would argue that value investors should only sell if they feel the stock price has reached its intrinsic value. They should not get bogged down in the short-term trading game; there are no assurances on what will happen in the short-term, which is why value investors are long-term oriented to begin with. For example, it is entirely possible that the stock now becomes a positive momentum play for another group of blind speculators.
It is scary that there are investors out there who don't even study a company enough to verify its name. It's even scarier that this group of investors is large enough to move a stock's price significantly. How's that for an "efficient market"?
Hat tip to Trevor Scott for noticing the error.
Disclosure: Author has a long position in shares of ACU
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