The WSJ reports for eight years John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods, used a pseudonym to talk smack about how great his company was:

Rahodeb began posting messages about Whole Foods shares on Yahoo.com in the late 1990s. He quickly gained a reputation as being one of the stock's biggest cheerleaders, and gamely defended himself when other posters chastised him for being too rosy. "I've never pretended to be anything but enthusiastic about WFMI," he wrote in 2000, using Whole Foods' stock symbol. "I admit to my bias -- I love the company and I'm in for the long haul. I shop at Whole Foods. I own a great deal of its stock. I'm aligned with the mission and values of the company... Is there something wrong with this?"

Rahodeb often sparred with other users, deploying a rigorous analysis of financial statements. "Your quarterly cash flow variance isn't statistically meaningful because the time period is too short," he complained to another user who had criticized Whole Foods in March 2006. He then pasted a summary of the previous six years of Whole Foods' operating cash flow. "Over the past 5 years operating cash flow has increased 330%," Rahodeb noted.

I don't see the harm cheerleading one's company using a pseudonym, as long as he merely pointed to publicly available facts doing it. If he posted inside information, or paid people to cheerlead, that would be different. But as the boss, he probably truly believes in his strategy, and it appears he wrote unapologetically as a Whole Foods bull--he didn't pretend he was a bear just about to cover his shorts (and these boards are filled with huge bulls and huge bears--indifferent people don't care so much).

I remember when I worked for large corporations, and often I would see information only known to employees on there about strategies, how well they are doing, stupid things various executives did. Nothing blatantly illegal (eg, earnings are down this quarter). Further, often bears and bulls wrote really good analysis, as if someone who just went long or short tried as well as the could to justify to themselves or convince others they did the right thing. It was actually quite informative, and I thought any good analyst should be reading this stuff, because most of the uninformative posts are pretty easily ignored.

Engaging in chit-chat with the great unwashed cybersphere of 21-year olds quick to call you an idiot is actually kind of refreshing. First, because large corporations can be filled with toadies unwilling to give you their real opinion of some new initiative. Secondly, not very many CEOs can and will defend their business model without argument by authority, or by merely being clueless to the criticisms. If anyone was tricked into buying Whole Foods by 'Rahodeb' based on his analysis of nonconfidential information, shame on them.