It's the kind of thing that I immediately look at and think about how strangely groups of relatively low influence alone can create wealth through intentional virality and also how it is not really sustainable except that it can be very effective for those who curate it well. The pump and dump strat used to be mostly in ethically ambiguous stock brokers, but now crypto, robinhood, reddit, broader regulatory changes have made it easier for random people to do it more broadly with stuff like gamestop (which made him wealthy but I think cost him his job at the time IIRC), yet was technically legal since it was done outside of work hours.
This TSLA thing is just another example of a specific product being sold for reasons that may not be what they seem as it could be attractive to people who want to short a stock, it may actually prevent some from doing just that since it'll almost certainly be obvious to someone with access to investment logs who purchased put options for that day and what their social is, it could actually be a very misguided attempt or even semi-effective attempt at it's stated purpose, or a mix of all of the above. We also may never know as everything can be edited into preferred narratives by so many people inside and outside the power structure.
Post truth is interesting but exhausting.
www.barrons.com
