Investing.com - Shares of Twitter were slammed in midday trading, leaving investors scratching their heads about such a sharp move with no news out from the company.
Twitter (NYSE:TWTR) stock tumbled about 7% at 11:12 AM ET (16:12 GMT), with traders and investors speculating about the catalyst on, of course, Twitter itself (among other places).
One possibility raised by Briefing.com is that investors are taking into account a recent story by Politico that Fox News in not tweeting as a protest against users revealing host Tucker Carlson’s home address.
But the boycott by Fox has been going on for weeks.
Others speculated that a recent suspension of an account impersonating Russian President Vladimir Putin, which had around 1 million followers, was the reason. That could lead to more accounts being purged, including parody accounts of public figures.
"We suspended @putinRF_eng for impersonation based on a valid report we received from Russian officials," Twitter said on Wednesday.
Twitter spokesman Ian Plunkett said in an email that the suspended account was not affiliated with Putin.
According to archived images of the account, it was created in November 2012, had about 1 million followers and mainly posted official government links to Putin's public appearances.
The S&P 500 Communication Services index was down about 0.6%, mainly due to the Twitter slide.
-- Reuters contributed to this report