Agreements, often written, among a group of traders to delegate authority to a single manager to trade in a specific stock for a work period of time and then to share in the resulting profits or losses.
The perpetrators sometimes work directly for unscrupulous Investor Relations firms who have convertible notes that convert for more shares the lower the bid or ask price is; thus the lower these Bashers can drive a stock price down by trying to convince shareholders they have bought a worthless security, the more shares the Investor Relations firm receives as compensation.
A pump and dump scheme is generally part of a more complex grand plan of market manipulation on the targeted security.
(see Stock Bashing) Actions designed to artificially raise the market price of listed securities and give the impression of voluminous trading in order to make a quick profit.
The stock price gradually falls as people new to the stock short it on the basis of the poor outlook for the company, until the number of shorted shares greatly exceeds the total number of shares that are not held by those aware of the lure and squeeze scheme (henceforward "people in the know").
[10] A type of manipulation possible when financial instruments are settled based on benchmarks set by the trading of physical commodities, for example in United States Natural Gas Markets.
The manipulator takes a large long (short) financial position that will benefit from the benchmark settling at a higher (lower) price, then trades in the physical commodity markets at such a large volume as to influence the benchmark price in the direction that will benefit their financial position.
Spoofing can be a factor in the rise and fall of the price of shares and can be very profitable to the spoofer who can time buying and selling based on this manipulation.
Price-fixing is a very simple type of fraud where the principals who publish a price or indicator conspire to set it falsely and benefit their own interests.
In cornering the market the manipulators buy sufficiently large amount of an asset, often a commodity, so they can control the price creating in effect a monopoly.