Whole Foods CEO, Pumping Stock on Message Board

Well as you know I am not a big fan of stock message boards. However, I can't stay away from it either. Sometimes when a stock is moving sharply upwards inexplicably on no news, I would go to the message boards and check out the buzz and rumors.

However, I never thought that I could get insider information from these message board. I just found out from this fresh Wall Street Journal article that Whole Food's CEO, John Mackey has been posting in Yahoo! WFMI message board under the name rahodeb. As rahodeb, Mackey made posts that were positive on WFMI and sometimes blasting its competitors, including Wild Oats, that Whole Foods is in the process of acquiring (if the FTC lets them).

I wonder how many other CEO's or other C-whatever-O or VP's are actually pumping their own stocks in disguise in message boards. It can probably helpful to know these posters. However, I am more interested in what the followup from this case would be. I wonder if corp executives would be required to report their online identities to the SEC soon.