This title is inaccurate ... burning money implies it was spent on something. In this case, it implies that renaming the parent company is responsible for the stock price sinking from its August high. There are quantitative reasons for the stock slide that have nothing to do with this renaming - Facebook lost users for the first time in its history and the announcement that ATT would cost at least $10Bn.
You're right. Their stock was going to tank eventually because of increasing privacy regulations.
I hope someone at Apple’s financial team made the suggestion to trade derivatives on Meta to reap the benefits of their actions on Meta stock price.
Is that legal?
Not legal advice:
Apple made its intentions public. It was the market that mispriced the impact.
Apple likely has access to non-public statistics actually showing the impact.
Are they obligated to not trade on their own research and information? And it’s not Apple stock, it’s Meta’s. Great topic for a Matt Levine Money Stuff segment on his laws of insider trading series.