Brian

Management has nothing to do with it.. The only part management has is going to the financial institutions to arrange an offering. Manipulation is then done in the open market which no company has control over. Company insiders usually get their shares as stock options in their total compensation package. Have unscrupulous employees ever used insider info to make stock decisions yes it happens all the time in many companies and these people are usually summarily dismissed when caught. Same with unscrupulous employees of financial institutions that leak out insider information, they usually get canned and in many cases charged. That's how insider info works..HOWEVER manipulation is done in many ways. The insider information I was referring to was things like seeing if a bid/ask order is a stop loss or a normal order. My level 2 only shows an order and doesn't identify it as a stop loss. This information allows institutions ( along with super computers running sophisticated software) to identify and manipulate trends and create greed or panic with relative ease. Frequently stops are taken out on low volume prior to moving SP.