50 Cent tweets stock tips for company he owns 30 million shares in, nets $10 mil

50 Cent spent the weekend on Twitter pimping a company called H&H Imports; according to the SEC, he owns 30 million shares of the firm. Over the weekend, the shares gained $0.29, netting the rapper nearly $10 million.

Earlier we noted that shares of HNHI added $50 million in market cap today thanks to tweets from 50 Cent aka Curtis Jackson.
Obviously he's being compensated. How much? A LOT.

How To Make $10 Million From Just One Weekend Of Tweeting (via Kottke)

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brillow

The problem is he probably couldn’t sell it. If he owns 30 millions shares then he owns about 17% of the company. Does anyone want to buy 17% of this company? Answer: No.
- Anonymous
  
  There’s no individual person who would want to buy that much. But if he would have sold when all his twitter followers were buying in, there would have been plenty of people to buy it. There may still be plenty of people who want to buy a little piece. He doesn’t have to sell all his shares to one person.
- mdh
  
  answer: he did.
foxtails

How apropos that 50 cent is trading penny stocks.
Anonymous

Wu Tang Financial!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qid_WGBrQjA
benher

Ah, the Tweets of Phitty!
If he manages to cash out he could always hire a maid for his grandmother to take out the trash.
senorglory

oh no. this sounds bad. any securities attorneys want to explain this? trouble for 50c?
Anonymous

Certainly a classic pump and dump, but ISTM that if done right, this MIGHT be legal. It’s important that:
1.) He have no actual inside knowledge of how the company is doing that is not available to other investors.(insider trading)
2.) He never misrepresnts who he is or his relationsip with the company. (fraud)
3.) He has no fiduciary duty and never implys a fiduciary duty to those that he tweets. (various SEC stock trading rules)
sickkid1972

Isn’t this kind of thing usually called “insider trading” or at least “taking the piss”?
Anonymous

Insider trading much? He’s stuck: if he sells, he’ll be slapped with an stock fraud charge. If he doesn’t, that $10,000,000 will only ever exist on paper.
MarkM

Pump and Dump is completely illegal.
What, we gonna see 50c and Wesley Snipes as cellies together?
murrayhenson

What goes up must come down – I’m willing to guess that in the near future the worth of stock purchased will be somewhere between zero and …50 cents.
Anonymous

It would only be insider trading if he owns a high enough percentage of the outstanding stock to be considered an insider. I believe that statute requires 10 percent ownership, iirc.
Beelzebuddy

This is quite a bit more lucid than is usual for “the fiddy,” or whatever Chucklecheeks is calling himself this afternoon. In particular, he seems to have discovered the period key, a most disheartening revelation for this fan.

Could his PR handler have taken back the airwaves? His current grasp of grammar is a little TOO accurate for my suspicions.
mark zero

Can’t wait to hear the 50C / SEC mashup.
Camp Freddie

Well now that a black man from the street is getting rich from white-collar crime, we can finally expect to see this sort of thing get punished.

*blackpower fist salute*
- Sarah Neptune
  
  You hit the nail on the head.
W. James Au

Next up: Kanye advises you to buy saving bonds, while Diddy recommends a diversified portfolio managed through Charles Schwab.
GreatRewards

Guarantee you the SEC will investigate. I’m willing to bet he was selling into that buying frenzy he caused. That’s typical penny stock behavior.

Step 1: Buy a LOT of a penny stock for almost nothing.
Step 2: Hype the stock online (forums, twitter, etc.) with
statements like “Double your money fast!” and “Get in now!”
Step 3: Sell your holdings while all the suckers are buying.
Step 4: Laugh.

Lather, Rinse, Repeat.
- Halloween Jack
  
  AKA “pump and dump“. good luck with that, Fitty-Sen.
Anonymous

He’ll be the humiliation of the Prison/Rapper crossover world… in the Federal CAN for Stock Fraud!!!
Anonymous

Fiddy used to be in small time crime ..now he’s graduated to the big time. If he’s smart, he will swiftly associate himself with Goldman Sachs, which means that all his white collar crime will never, ever be punished, no matter how blatant it is.
Brainspore

Over the weekend, the shares gained $0.29…

Shortly afterward he announced that he now wishes to be addressed as “79 Cent.”
- mdh
  
  well played.
AirPillo

Pro-tip jackass: if they sent Martha Stewart to prison for this kind of thing, they’ll send you there too.
Anonymous

maybe he should sell some before they hit, well, 50 cent.

.~.
Anonymous

No big deal. He has enough money to get away with it.
murray

This was not a pump and dump.

He obviously didn’t dump his shares, as you can see by looking at the volume for the last 3 days (9M, 6M, 2.5M), and the fact that the price didn’t crash in the way it would have if there was a sudden flood of supply. His lawyers almost certainly warned him not to sell any when they found out what he was saying on twitter.

He also didn’t make any false statements to incite buying.
hobomike

Go short it! It’s your birthday!
- Anonymous
  
  Zing! Seriously funny, I thought
semiotix

My regulatory philosophy on securities trading is somewhere between “draconian” and “Hitleresque,” but I have to say I’m fine with a loophole that lets 50 Cent, Kanye West, or other acknowledged masters of the tweet engage in all the pump-and-dump shenanigans they want.

Quite literally a small price to pay for the cultural and artistic profit we would reap.
- Jake0748
  
  hope you are kidding?