This article doesn't really explain much. I think this the following definition may be closer to reality (from Twitter, I follow a bunch of short-sellers):

> A short ladder attack is when a stock goes down for totally valid, normal reasons, but the bagholder realizes a conspiracy theory is preferable to admitting to a dumb trade."

Also, I like these tweets by Jima Chanos (@Diogenes), well-known short-seller:

> Can anyone explain to me what a “short ladder attack” is? I have seriously never heard the term before this week.

> Now I know why I had never heard of a “short ladder attack”...Because it is complete gibberish.

Yes, short attacks are complete gibberish and never existed before the past week. Just a conspiracy by the poors and those dirty people without our shiny degrees.

Let me google that for you. OMFG, what's this 2014 article that details how this works?

https://seekingalpha.com/instablog/11442671-gerald-klein/309...

You're being unneccessarily flippant and you're not even addressing the point. The point wasn't about short attacks, it was about "short ladder attacks". The person you're replying to is actually right, that explanation of a "short ladder attack" actually just generically describes short attacks and doesn't address the nonsense conspiracy of short ladders.

The short ladder attack actually is a stupid conspiracy. It's the idea that you can paint the tape by trading back and forth with a conspirator, but do it at a price that's lower than fair market value. This is impossible. If you try and buy at a price lower than fair market value you aren't going to be matched with your conspirator, you're going to get matched against the order book at the best possible price. So to ladder down you need to control the entire demand in the market. It's absurd.

>So to ladder down you need to control the entire demand in the market

Isn't that what they did with robinhood/others restrictions?

debunked in a reddit thread. The order book simply doesn't work that way. Trading with your hedge fund buddies at an artificially low price doesn't cause the price to go down in the same way that trading with your wsb buddies at an artificially high price (eg. selling GME at $800 when the price is at $100) doesn't cause the price to go up.

https://www.reddit.com/r/investing/comments/lbib0x/the_myth_...