I don't feel bad for these guys. I feel bad for the new traders that blindly followed these guys and lost their money. I think moving forward there will be more focus on limiting this activity but only on the retail side. Hedge Funds and Market Makers will always win.
Who cares? Manipulators provide trading opportunities for traders (and themselves). So be thankful to manipulators, Twitter, and Discord. Who is complaining? Lazy greedy gullible investors, who lost tons of $$$$ (and SEC because of those investors)? Manipulators and traders can co-exist peacefully. Manipulators and investors are arch-enemies.
Back in late 1999, during the heyday of the dot com bubble, I was scratching my head thinking how stupid people could be to get sucked into these sleazy pump-and-dump schemes. And here we are, more than 20 years later, still full of these naive suckers. Truth be told, most of these suckers deserved to get their money robbed. Most of them are too damn lazy to do their own homework, not even bothering to learn how to trade properly, so they get no sympathy from me.
Easy come easy go. I have to say the dot com bust had some epic shorts. NTAP, ARBA to name a couple. Made a lot swing trading (short) those after harvesting the investments on the way up.
One of the most influential youtuber, ,,Financial Education", (the irony) when it comes to finance, all in kids college money into SDC when it was at ~$10/share, because - ,,they don't need it now". Must have been, a very well paid pump cuz all the remaining rep is gone.
I remember a South Beach trading institute doing this in 00-2005. The subs paid $900-$2,000 a month to get screwed by pre-bought shit they shorted and sold. Tokyo J did the same but on a much more tiny scale compared to these crooks. Dan Dorf in the 80s or 90s? “ Ianthe Jeanne Dugan Washington Post Staff Writer Thursday, January 6, 2000; Page A01 NEW YORK, Jan. 5—In the brief history of online stock chat rooms, nobody has made more of a name than "Tokyo Joe." “That question was answered today with a resounding "no" by stock regulators. The Securities and Exchange Commission filed civil fraud charges against Park, alleging that he used his vast influence to pump up the price of stocks just before he sold them and lied to members about his performance. The SEC said Park made "substantial profits" but many of the trades involved low-priced stocks. While providing no estimate of Park's profits, the SEC provided examples of 10 cases in which he appeared to make profits totaling tens of thousands of dollars.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPcap/2000-01/06/070r-010600-idx.html
Those who seek easy money without knowing who they are up against will most likely lose. Isn't that how it should be ???
Tokyo Joe Mex! How can you forget that douchebag if you ever lived through that period? He really was a class of his own.