What shorters? Do you have any proof of that? Getting off the Berlin exchange didn't do anything for the pps. I think you confuse shorting with lack of performance when it relates to the pps. Company stock prices do tend to go down when they always lose money every quarter for years.
Grand conspiracy Of course, you can't talk about market manipulation without at least bringing up a fear harbored by a (hopefully) small minority of investors -- that the entire game is rigged. Conspiracy theories abound, and everyone from the Federal Reserve to the Masons to the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (just kidding) has been implicated as the "they" that are secretly pulling the strings behind the scenes.
The big run-up in tech stocks in the '90s? It was "they." The nasty crash that wiped out so much money among individual investors? "They" again. Sometimes the conspiracies are even a bit more elaborate -- such as the one I found online that suggests that "they" took their winnings from the late '90s tech run and used it to buy all sorts of mines, refineries, wells, and whatnot before instigating the recent commodity run.
"Balderdash" is the only word I can think of to describe these "theories" -- or at least it's the only word that my editors will let me use. If you really believe that nonsense, you need to do two things right away. First, sell all of your stocks (why play a rigged game?). Second, install heavy-duty padding on your walls and floors because you could really hurt yourself.
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