But the people saying things like "buy GME and call your broker to instruct them not to lend your shares" or encouraging people to go "all in" and the comments specifically encouraging others to buy GME to screw $hedgeFund have left a pretty clear paper trail of their intent to induce others to purchase and manipulate the market.
I kind of doubt this. Lightning rarely stricks twice, and unless he has a history of these sorts of moves who knows if he'll have a pick like this again.
Also, the money would have to be reallly good considering he's by-far set for life after this.
My biggest concern for him at this point is that he'll get dragged in to investigations regarding this. I agree with you that he specifically doesn't seem to have done anything wrong. I don't think he even ever said "You should do this", or insinuated that others should; it was just a "This is what I'm doing and here are my reasons why".
I hope the next couple years of his life aren't an absolute shit-show dealing with fallout of being the most "high profile" name (so far).
And when a lawyer says "interesting," they mean "expensive."
> Where things get interesting (and fuzzy) here that I’m not quite sure where the line is between a group working together to influence the market and just... the market.
I think it's also noteworthy here that the short interest was at least initially over 100%. That's a powder keg; you don't "create" a short squeeze in that environment so much as just wait for any random spark to cause one.
If it comes down to the SEC prosecuting individual members of WSB (where they can't prove misrepresentation), I think there will also be substantial first amendment arguments at play. One recent rallying call of the bubble has been to buy and hold GME stock as a protest against hedge funds / the stock market as a whole, and on the face of things that's political protest. The SEC isn't in the business of investigating other politically motivated stock boycotts, so a politically-motivated stock purchase should also be treated with kid gloves.
> That said, there are definitely a handful of individuals on WSB who got the ball rolling and have profited heavily.
From what I can tell, RoaringKitty/DFV is less likely to be a target of a market manipulation charge because their arguments were made well over a year ago and were ultimately ones of value; the profit did not depend on causing a short squeeze, and DFV in fact took profit from a large portion of their initial stake by the end of 2020 (before the squeeze).
The linked post is more direct in "these purchases will cause a short squeeze," so it could more credibly be called manipulation. But again, the powder keg makes the analysis weirder.