Eventually the “manipulation” will push the price to a point where other actors sell, and then more people sell and the price corrects (see yesterday and today’s charts). Buying equities and options in large amounts is not market manipulation. There are lots of institutional actors placing large orders all the time.
>Eventually the “manipulation” will push the price to a point where other actors sell, and then more people sell and the price corrects (see yesterday and today’s charts).
Not sure how this statement helps your argument. The same happens in pump and dumps. The people who artificially manipulated the price up in the first place sell in large, duping the latecomers out of their money, and the price corrects.
>Buying equities and options in large amounts is not market manipulation.
No it is not, but this isn't a simple matter of buying of equities and options. It's a pattern of repeatedly buying equities and options by one large party in a way which allows for potential manipulation. As so, even if such a pattern isn't illegal now, why shouldn't such a pattern be made illegal? Wash trades used to be legal before 1936, but we made them illegal for similar reasons...
Now please explain why this activity shouldn't be made illegal, when wash trading is deemed illegal. Wash trading after all, involves buying stocks... yet it's illegal.
Wash trading is buying and selling to yourself to create the illusion of volume, which is fraudulent. Buying OTM call options on an exchange does nothing to distort volume or manipulate price, it’s simply part of price discovery, just like buying or selling shares.
This scenario is not just "buying OTM call options", just like wash trading is not just "buying stock". This is the problem with your argument. You oversimplify the issue.
Wash trading is a way of buying/selling stock, (namely by one party at the same time), which can be abused to manipulate prices. Just like what is happening here is a way of buying stock and its options (namely by one party at the same time, repeatedly), which can be abused to manipulate prices.
