Stock investment spam pays about 5% profit in just a few days.

Joel Spolsky pointed this link out. I have had the idea of researching
the impact in price around the time of stock market spam on my list of
things to do for about a year or so. I didn't get around to it but
someone else had the same idea.

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=920553

The results are:

"
Before brokerage fees, the average investor who buys a stock on the day it
is most heavily touted and sells it 2 days after the touting ends will
lose approximately 5.5%.

For the top half of most thoroughly touted stocks, a spammer who buys, a
spammer who buys at the ask price on the day before unleashing touts and
sells at the bid price on the day his or her touting is the heaviest will,
on average, earn 5.79%.
"