Twitter, Inc. (NYSE: TWTR) may have become just the latest stock hoaxes to sucker-in many gullible investors. The reports that the company had a bid of $31 billion were from a fake website that mirrored the Bloomberg website.

What is interesting is that Twitter shares, even down handily from highs, are very expensive on traditional metrics. The market cap is just under $25 billion, but it is valued at almost 15 times total sales and it is valued at just over 100 times expected 2015 earnings per share and valued at 55 times expected 2016 earnings per share.

It turns out that someone is obviously looking to get out of Twitter in hopes that investors will believe anything. It also now turns out that the markets may still be reacting to hoaxes and rumors, but this is becoming a seriously minimal reaction tool compared to the past.

Hoaxes are not new. We saw a recent hoax in shares of Avon, and the biggest hoax of all-time is still probably the Emulex hoax from back in the year 2000.

Twitter shares closed up 2.6% at $36.72 on Tuesday. Its 52-week trading range is $33.51 to $55.99, and it has a consensus analyst price target of $45.63.

What investors might want to consider here is that Twitter, at least as of now, is just too expensive of a stock to be acquired. The $25 billion value today is down handily from the past, and that means that Twitter’s management, even if temporary, would even entertain what some shareholders think is a low-ball sell-out offer.

Sometimes stocks look cheap because of a sell-off in price. While this is no longer over 100 times forward earnings expectations, there may be a huge difference between the operating earnings and the real earnings.

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