Yes. It is illegal to lie to shareholders in the US and I refer you to the quote...

a11595 · on Jan 9, 2019

Umm, no. It is illegal to lie on a financial statement. It is not a lie if your corp statement is a theory of why a foreign market has declined.

icebraining · on Jan 9, 2019

Yes, but taobility was wondering whether China had such a large impact on Apple's sales, not why.

barkingcat · on Jan 9, 2019

this is impossibly naive. Of course it's illegal to lie to shareholders, but guaranteed 100% of publicly traded companies do.

What's the SEC going to do? They are in furloughs right now and have no budget to go after anyone. Looking further ahead, if a company has enough money, they can buy off the SEC by getting laws passed that will let the do whatever they want.