I'm confused. You cite the law that fraud demands a profit motive on the part of the person committing fraud (if I paraphrase) and then clearly understand the civil disobedience motivation was not motivated by personal profit.

You state that false information is the catchphrase in the law, and that he has liability facing this.

But then you say

<quote>The fact that this is the third such fraud in the last six months, the others being a false takeovers of David Jones and MacMahon Holdings, could really begin to undermine the confidence in the ASX.</quote>

and repeat the fraud word. If its not fraud, its not the third such fraud. Its the third recent incidence of false information, and it risks the confidence in the ASX, but its not the third fraud.

I want to know if the media that spread the false report will be held accountable.

You would think that someone would have had the time to fact check (email, phone call) before making it public. But isn't the share market also meant to be making decisions upon good information? So where was their fact checking? Once again, one phone call or email could have cleared it up.

At what point will we not be able to tell the difference between a hoax or a joke and real information?

Oh Michael Adams, Dean of a Law School, even if it is at Western Sydney, such learning, such concern for the law, for what is righteous and proper and above all such warm hearted concern for the future of this brave young man. So tender, so considred, so balanced.

What weasel words.

What you miss entirely, perhaps because of the constant company of lawyers whose presence is as soporofic as ubiquitous air conditioning, is the sense of urgency that young people such as Jonathan experience when they read the science of global warming. The law? The rules? When they face the prospect of four or more degrees of global annihilation?

Maybe he just has been listening too much to the Sex Pistols 'No Future'. Noooo Foooture. Remember that mate? Were you ever present when it was goin' around and inhaled? Did you ever have a moment when you felt like bustin' out and doing something for the sake of others regardless of your own interests?

I'll warrant you didn't. And you never will.

Your voice will not protect the birds, the forests, the insects, the forests, rivers, seas or any fraction of the multiplicity of life on which all humans depend. Yours is the voice of the past and so is that of all of those counselling caution or patience in name of NO FUTURE at all.

Well, maybe some sort of future but not one worth inhabiting. A future of bending the knee to corporate authority, a future of personal engrossment at the expense of all else.

Pathetic, mate, truly effing pathetic.

Oh, hang on a sec. I'll have a second bite at this over ripe, indeed rotten, cherry.

Market credibility?

You've heard of the Global Financial Crisis, yeah?

Goldman and Sachs?

Roll over professor. The forks up your ass and your done.

Hahahahahahahahahahaha.

Oh whoa, I'm having a ball here!

Professor, did you mean creditability or credibility? There's a difference, you know.

Spokespersons for 'tha market' seem to be less and less literate these days. No surprises there.

Hi to everyone hangin' out in the forests.

For those who question the banner in the photo that introduces this article. "Smart Investors dump Whitehaven Coal".

Check out
http://www.carbontracker.org/carbonbubble

"We now have around 7 trillion subprime carbon assets in the global economy and their value, like the subprime mortgages, is based on an assumption that is highly questionable." Al Gore

According to the most likely projections by climate scientists, “at least one-half of fossil fuel assets will have to be left in the ground,” said Nick Robins, head of the HSBC climate change centre of excellence in London. “We’re still pricing [companies in the extractives sector] as if they are all going to be exploited.” “This is a particular concern for the UK as our stock market is overweight fossil fuels,” he said, creating the risk of stranded assets.

Confidence in the ASX? Do I gather correctly that after the biggest man-made melt-down of the stock market since the great Depression the legal professions' main concern is with some hippie hoaxing ever gullible, greedy and ignorant market players into a temporary drop of share value?

What about chasing some of those criminals who actually and forever wiped millions and billions of public dollars off our accounts, robbing the world of savings, government budgets and superannuation? Ah but no, they do not have a political agenda, only want to enrich themselves and their companies...

What was that definition of fraud again?

Poor beggar, not a journalist or a radio or tv shock jock.

We seem to have lost all perspective in what is real and what is constructed. The environment and its role for life support and continuity is real. The ASX and the virtual units it trades is constructed. The necessity of the former underlies the optional existence of the latter.
Any design student can whip up a fake advert, media release, campaign which, if it goes viral, can influence people's actions (think how many believed the eagle takes baby YouTube) - in the end, those who believe without critical thinking can only blame themselves for their ignorance. The biggest contribution Jonathan has brought to this is to make people think - as a student, that assignment would have been judged an effective, if radical, HD no doubt! Blame should go to those (ANZ and media) incompetent on the job.

Another term for the "concept of efficient market hypotheses" is 'sentiment driven impetuousness' a trait the stock markets have never been able to shake.

Jonathon Moylan exploited this. He tipped over the first domino and the market did the rest.

Unlike most corporate criminals and dodgy politicians he confessed and told the whole truth. He is braving dealing with the consequences.

Bravo.

What Mr Moylan did is not to be admired, but it is disappointing that an author with the expertise to put some context around the consequence of Mr Moylan's actions has not done so.

Whitehaven has on issue, according to its 2012 annual report,1,013,190,387 ordinary shares. On the day of the hoax, total turnover was 9,091,624 - that is, less than 1% of Whitehaven's shares changed hands. That is, for more than 99% of the shares which did not change hands, the intra-day slump in the share price was of no moment whatsoever.

However, even 1% probably overstates the number of shares affected. Average turnover in Whitehaven shares on the days around the hoax is a bit less than 3 million shares, which would make up some of the overall day's turnover. It is also likely that there is some double counting in turnover, in that some sellers who sold on the rumour then had to buy back in on the fact to rebalance their portfolios. So perhaps 0.5% of the stock in Whitehaven was affected by the hoax. This is a lot less sexy than "OMG $314million OMG", of course.

The second point is that those who did sell on the rumour obviously didn't do any homework necessary to establish the actual facts. Companies are requited to make continuous disclosure to the market. When the ANZ facility was put in place on 8 November 2012, Whitehaven disclosed that fact to the market in an announcement flagged as "price sensitive". If ANZ had actually informed Whitehaven that it was cancelling the facility, this, too would have been price sensitive (as demonstrated by the slump). So, with a "media release" from the ANZ but no ASX announcement from Whitehaven, there were three possibilities:

(a) Whitehaven was in flagrant breach of its continuous disclosure obligations; or

(b) ANZ is the sort of bank which cancels a $1.2billion facility by issuing a media release without prior notice to the customer whose facility it is; or

(c) the media release was a hoax.

(a) and (b) are both sufficiently unlikely that it is difficult to believe that a properly informed seller would have sold without checking why news of the cancellation of the facility had come from ANZ and not from Whitehaven. If any "individual small shareholders [did] unfairly los[e] money by the fraud", maybe that loss will indicate to them the need to pay a bit more attention to what they are doing.

'Whitehaven'. Such a nice clean name (or misnomer) for such a dirty, destructive business. A wolf in sheep's clothing. It's time we worked a bit harder on our addiction to the filthy black stuff.

acting within the law also gave us the GFC.

Perhaps radical action serves to highlight where the laws are failing the needs of society as a whole?

Perhaps a couple of radical actions when CDO's were just getting started may have been enough to prompt a review of the "law" to prevent the damage that has occured after the fact.

No law is perfect. Laws change and should. Politicians make the laws and are reactive, not pro-active.

Encouraging to see some respectable Australian people are happy to be seen standing alongside the 'outlaw' http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10200323856321362&set=o.146006968886446&type=1&ref=nf

Neither "public nuisance" nor "fraud".

But admirable public service and deep moral commitment.

As Australia roasts & burns & the CO2 chickens come home to roost ( & toast) the business as usual status quo of privileged white men in suits is no longer tenable. Reality has changed. The message is that investing in coal & coal fired power and exporting it to massive Chinese & Indian CO2 atmospheric pumps is not only unethical, it's destructive of life on Earth. It's betting on & profiting from death & destruction.

I do not know, the legality or not of Moylan's action, but what he has done is to remind everyone of the flaws and weaknesses of the current market system. It demonstrates how much this system has been set up as simply a reactionary investment process rather than one based on a proper check and verification of the facts. And it says very little if anything has changed since the GFC hit in changing the culture and practices of the market. The market continues to act on greed and fear. Facts, or ethics, what are they?

Neither the markets, nor the mining industry operate on ethics. They would not know what you are talking about if you started talking about ethics to them. Now you can talk about laws, but laws often have very little to do with ethics. And as for laws, both the markets and the mining industry have treated them very loosely when it suited them and with total disregard if they can get away with it. It is the small investor who does not understand this who is most likely to be hurt. But even that can not excuse them failing to check the veracity of what Moylan did as they should check the veracity of the facts behind making any investment.

As for Moylan going to jail over his actions. If he did it would make a mockery of the failure to jail anyone from the big banks or the rating agencies who actions and deceptions brought about the GFC in the first place and caused far greater loss of person wealth than his actions would have. I for one cannot remember anyone going to jail over their actions since 2007 when the GFC hit the world.