Anyone that follows guru up or down deserves whatever they get.
It's not so blind, Steve.
You see, members of Elgindy's posse know that if they short an issue together, especially a small-cap, they can literally cause the issue to depress... thus constituting something akin to a "sure thing".
You see, if one Joe Blow shorts 5,000 shares on the NASD - big deal, it just looks like one Joe Blow selling 5,000 shares at market. Not a tremendous amount of selling pressure.
When 250 Joe Blows contemporaneously conspire to short an issue, especially a small cap like Aria as described in the Wired April 2000 article, it looks to the market as if there is 1,250,000 shares of selling pressure coming all at once. And that is TREMENDOUS selling pressure for a small cap, especially when it hits the ECN's all at once.
The MM's will be happy to move the price down with all of these market sells to get the volatility going and make money on the trades. Meanwhile, the effect is as intended - a sure and purposefully executed depression in price by conspiring to sell at substantially the same price at substantially the same time.
Clear as a bell |
