Poop And Scoop

When we hear the term “poop and scoop,” we automatically flash back to long walks in the park with Fido, a small shovel, and a bunch of plastic bags. As it turns out, though, “poop and scoop” has less to do with cleaning up after Fido and more to do with poopy behavior designed to drop the price of a particular stock.

What happens is this: a small group of shady individuals gets together and decides to start spreading rumors and false information about a company’s performance on the internet. Maybe they make up a story about financial mismanagement, or invent allegations about leadership misconduct. Their goal is simple: they want to drive down the price of the company’s stock. Once it’s low enough, thanks to everyone else selling off their shares, they buy it up and then make a killing when the price goes back up to where it should have been originally.

If this sounds illegal, don’t worry, it totally is. But the problem is that it’s hard to prove nefarious intent, especially in the era of opinions-as-news, retweets, and shared posts.