"free analyst reports are sometimes made available and fund managers go on T.V. in part to support their positions. Is that any different than when some retail investor posts on a message board why he likes a stock he is holding?
It's called 'free speech'. Not manipulation."
Free speech? It does not seem to be that free to me since the wall-street houses are paying these ANALysts exhorbitant amounts of money and in return all they ask is that they give their "opinions" to the public for free! If you do not consider the oppenheimer downgrade of ZGEN manipulation, then nothing is ever manipulation for you...
"It is not Wall Street that allows shorting but the SEC."
Same animal in different clothes. The SEC members come from wall-street and, after their short tenure at the SEC helping their buddies on wall-street, they go back to that same industry with a higher pay as compensation for their efforts.
"You think hedge funds collectively control all the newspapers and all the financial news on T.V. and the web??? What happens when one hedge fund is long a stock and another is short? Do they flip a coin?"
It is a cartel my friend with clear understanding as to who calls the main shots. The big fish lead and the small fish follow. It is all about making money at the expense of the retail investor and YES they are in collusion with the financial news and the TV, etc... They give them the crums for stories and these oblige so that they can keep getting the crums. As to hedge funds being on different sides of the trades, that very rarely happens and when it does the bigger one wins. Overall, hedge funds collectively short small cap stocks and collectively go long the big caps. That is what they call their scam hedging by pushing some through the roof and others down to hell. Small biotechs are especially fertile grounds for them...
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