St. Joe Shares Plunged: What You Need to Know (JOE)

St. Joe Shares Plunged: What You Need to Know

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Although we don't believe in timing the market or panicking over market movements, we do like to keep an eye on big changes -- just in case they're material to our investing thesis.

What: St. Joe Company (NYSE: JOE ) dropped 12% in intraday trading today after news broke over the weekend that the company and its chairman are subjects of a formal Securities and Exchange Commission probe.

So what: There's nothing like a whiff of accounting scandal to scare investors and this one is a stink bomb. An SEC filing made after the markets closed on Friday disclosed the probe, which covers a variety of matters ... including securities-law anti-fraud provisions for corporate officers and board members, internal controls, and financial reports.

Now what: When it rains on northern Florida's largest landowner, it pours. The company revealed last January that the SEC is conducting an informal investigation into its real estate impairment practices, a big ticket item for a real estate development company. That was followed on June 24 by a "related order of private investigation." Investors should take no comfort from what may have piqued the SEC's interest: Greenlight Capital's David Einhorn, famous for an early call on Lehman Brothers failure, accused St. Joe in October of overvaluing its real estate post-crash.

Interested in more info on JOE? Add it to your watchlist by clicking here.

The Steve Jobs Betrayal
You may already know that in the final year of his life, Jobs revealed a stunning betrayal — and told his biographer, "I will spend my last dying breath... and every penny of Apple's $40 billion in the bank to right this wrong." What was it that made Jobs so irate — and why could it make a few in-the-know investors some major profits over the coming months and years?

Enter your email address below to find out what made Jobs so enraged!

Fool contributor Cindy Johnson does not own shares of any company named above. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

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