Warnings from the Enron Message Board

36 Pages Posted: 25 Jul 2006

See all articles by James Felton

James Felton

Central Michigan University - Department of Finance and Law

Jongchai Kim

Mississippi Valley State University

Abstract

As Enron collapsed in the Summer and Fall of 2001, most Wall Street analysts maintained either buy or strong buy recommendations for Enron common stock. The largest bankruptcy in U.S. history was often described as coming without warning, as $60 billion in market capitalization vanished. We searched postings on the Yahoo! Enron Message Board between 1997 and 2001 for warnings of a crash to come. We found a compelling four-year history of Enron as told by apparent insiders through anonymous posts. Excerpts of 129 posts from Enron's Yahoo! message board, describing a disturbing corporate culture at Enron, include repeated warnings to investors to get out while they can.

Keywords: Enron, message board, scandal, inside information, governance

JEL Classification: D82, G11, G14, G24, G38, M52

Suggested Citation

Felton, James and Kim, Jongchai, Warnings from the Enron Message Board. Journal of Investing, Vol. 11, No. 3, pp. 29-52, Fall 2002, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=918519

James Felton (Contact Author)

Central Michigan University - Department of Finance and Law ( email )

Mount Pleasant, MI 48859
989-774-3269 (Phone)
989-774-6456 (Fax)

Jongchai Kim

Mississippi Valley State University

Itta Bena, MS 38941
United States

Do you have a job opening that you would like to promote on SSRN?

Paper statistics

Downloads
3,480
Abstract Views
8,917
Rank
7,029
PlumX Metrics