Sound Group Inc (SOGP)

[Monksdream]

Price manipulation is as old as civilization. It reflects human nature. Perhaps more specifically the shady side of human nature. Social norms attempt to keep it in check. But it will never be eliminated.
Price manipulation loosely defined is the artificial inflating or deflating the price of just about anything that trades on a marketplace in which humans determine a fair value that doesn’t change by an appreciable amount under ordinary circumstances.
Artificial price manipulation implies intent. It isn’t a spontaneous event. An individual, or group of individuals, cooperating with each other, or sometimes acting without knowing that others are cooperating to intentionally manipulate the price of just about anything is also possible.
Richard Wyckoff was a prominent Wall Streeter during the first quartile of the prior century. In his autobiography, Wall Street Adventures and Misadventures Through Forty Years, Wyckoff provides many examples of how the market operators of that era manipulated stock, bond and commodity prices that today are now illegal. My favorite is a story about the CEO of a drywall company shorting shares of the company stock followed up by dropping stories to financial reporters about how lousy business was. The stock price plummeted. The CEO covered his short, went long, and followed up with stories to financial reporters that the drywall business wasn’t so bad after all.
Wyckoff believed that all equities were always experiencing some form of manipulation.
The digital economy has changed forever how humans trade equities. During the Great Depression years of the 1930s, total volume of one million shares on the Stock Exchange was considered “heavy.” Today it happens with the blink of the eyes. Machines, that is to say, computer software, can make decisions in milliseconds that would require several minutes for the human brain to make.