> But isn't he correct? Jeff Bezos or Bill Gates could almost certainly achieve what the Reddit mob is doing and engineer a short squeeze. But how would that no

> But isn't he correct? Jeff Bezos or Bill Gates could almost certainly achieve what the Reddit mob is doing and engineer a short squeeze. But how would that not be market manipulation? So I actually spent a bunch of time thinking about this the other day, and came to the conclusion that yes, either of them could easily do the same thing to a small-cap stock all by themselves. There are a couple differences though. First, as soon as they control 5%, they would have to report. This would likely start making it more difficult for them to acquire additional shares), and they would have reporting requirements. This doesn't apply to a group of small individuals. Second, even if they could, what is the point? They bid up the stock, completely corner the market, and then what? *They would have no exit plan.* If they just start selling, the price will start dropping again. At the end, they'd end up in a similar position to where they started (minus transaction fees). If they planned to keep the entire company, and were buying it to control it, it would be cheaper to just acquire the company the traditional way ("hostile takeover" type acquisions not-withstanding) For what it's worth, I think this logic applies to hedge funds as well; they need to have an exit strategy, or there is no benefit. They can't make money for some of their investors, and lose money for others. This is different than the current WSB group. Their exit strategy is "try to undercut the rest of the group". Some of the group will benefit, while most will lose. This leaves an actual benefit for the leader. > The number of people who want to burn it all down is only increasing and it makes it hard to be optimistic about the future. It may seem rather tin-foil hat of me to say, but seeing reports of large amounts of foreign money piling in to the GME situation definitely made me consider how this would be yet another time that a relatively small amount of money could do a lot to destabilize the country.