RE: whether reddit is illegal, see https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/artic ... stop-rally
edit: sorry - didn't realize how long it wasBut is it securities fraud?
If a lot of people on Reddit band together to drive the price of a stock higher, is that illegal? I have been asked that question a lot recently, and I want to be clear that:
[Moderator: Deleted crossposting/lengthy quote. See link above for the full text.]
On the other hand it is all pretty dumb? Like if you are a securities regulator, you can think of your job narrowly as preventing people from lying about stocks, or more broadly as encouraging capital formation and fostering confidence in markets and moving markets toward efficiency and perfection. And, you know, this is the opposite of that. A popular conclusion from the GameStop story is “well I guess the stock market is nonsense now,” and I’m not sure that conclusion is wrong. Seems like the sort of thing the SEC wouldn’t like. But what can they do about it?