Fullmoonfever
Top 20
You'd probs enjoy this.Legal shorting involves the shorter borrowing th shares at $x per share in the hope that the share price will fall. If the share price falls to, say, $y, where y<x, they can buy shares at $y to return them to the lender, making $(x-y) per share profit.
However, if the share price rises to $z per share, where z>x, the shorter can face a loss of $(z-x) per share.
The practice you mention of manipulating the share price down by selling shares below what would be the market price is illegal and widespread on the ASX.
One indicator is if the SP often falls on close or in the after-market auction.
The practice is facilitated by bot trading, where computers sell small numbers of shares to continuously edge the SP down. Bot trading can also be tantamount to insider trading in that the large brokers can monitor incoming bids and make a purchase or sale before the bidders transaction is fulfilled.
Both short selling and bot trading should be banned as they are tools for picking the pockets of unsophisticated share holders.
It would be interesting to see how much the brokers donate to political parties.
Worth a watch regards to a whistleblower on HFT and Quants.
I've watched a few times here and there to remind myself of how stacked the markets are against the retail trader.