The one thing I'd like to know, above all else, is how much of the float is "controlled" by big players who are manipulating the price.
A while back, Jim Cramer said he called his broker and tried to buy 10,000 shares of Amazon. His broker said he couldn't get him that many. That is absolutely incredible.
Wouldn't it be the cat's meow if all of the internut stocks had "real" floats of around 100,000 shares? Just imagine, if you and your buddies have locked up nearly all the float, you can do whatever the hell you want with the price. You simply put a limit sell at 30 bucks above the current price, and when thousands of e-trade and schwab customers enter their "market buy" orders, the MMs have only two choices. They can sell you imaginary shares via a naked short, and expose themselves to tremendous losses, or they can give you the shares they see sitting 30 points above the current price.
That simple. But there is no way in hell to determine how large the "real" float is, so these guys can get away with it forever.
This type of float controlling combined with rampant retail desire for shares will very likely be in economic textbooks for our grandchildren as the greatest scam ever pulled in the equities markets.
Any chance the Naz or SEC would ever put an end to this practice?
At least on the NYSE, you have a trading desk for each stock and it is nearly impossible to pull this sort of stunt. On the Nasdaq, the crooks are given a blank check. |
