Is leveraging notoriety to raise stock prices illegal in the US?
"There are obviously lots of complexities here, and there are rules against price or market manipulation that are somewhat interpretive due to the rules' inclusion of the manipulator's intent, but: Generally speaking, you can publicly promote the value of a company whose stock you own provided that you: Now, if you extol the value of a company publicly, and sell it immediately thereafter, ""pump and dump,"" the regulators might suggest that your actions imply that you didn't believe it was so wonderful, and were misleading the public to move the price.     That said, a fair retort might be that you loved it for all the reasons you said at [lower price], but thought it had run its course once it got to [higher price].   Again, if it can be demonstrated that your reason for praising it was to push the price higher, your intent may land you in hot water. This isn't legal advice or a full analysis, but if Fitty essentially declared his honest reasons for loving a stock in which he is invested, and discloses that investment, letting others know he is biased, he's probably ok, especially if he intends to hold it long term." "Yes, there are legal problems with what he did. To prevent fraud, the US government regulates who can give public investment advice and how they can do it. If you're getting paid to advise an individual, you have to pass certain examinations and maintain ongoing government certification. If you hold a position in a stock you're touting, you legally have to disclose it using particular language. And if you're a corporate insider or hold a significant position in a company, you're restricted on what you can say about the company and when you can say it. Mr. Jackson, aka 50 Cent, held a significant position in the company he tweeted about. My guess is the guys in the suits came to visit Mr. Cent, because if you go to the article the OP links to, at the bottom they mention Mr. Cent's tweet has been deleted and replaced with ""go talk to your investment advisor""." pump and dump is a common Illegal practice of boiler room operations. It refers to the talking a stock up, both through word of mouth as well as selling shares to unwitting buyers. I fail to see much difference between that practice and this. "If he didn't lie, I don't see the issue. He did not force anyone to buy anything. His opinion was stock X is good, he publicized it and it turned out to be true (at least temporary) - what's wrong with it?  It is customary for people who have either fiduciary duty towards the clients or are perceived as independent analysts to disclose their interest and potential conflict of interest, lest they lose the respect of the public as independent and trustworthy sources of financial information. Jackson never had that, express or implied, and never had the duty to provide anybody with impartial financial analysis, so he can say anything he wants. He can invest into the company and promote it and make money from it - isn't it what was called ""business"" once? Why is it even being questioned?"
This article addresses a man who specifically lost his skilled work to outsourcing to India. No one is talking about dishwashing level work here, that's more relevant to ILLEGAL immigration, and the practice of hiring illegal labor off the books by businesses.  Jobs that people don't want should pay more. That' supply and demand, the free market.  Janitors makes $15-30/ hr, more than easier low wage jobs. Maids make $25-60/hr. Garbage men make $20-60/hr.  Illegal people do it for less because they don't have full rights as citizens, and thus have less leverage to negotiate pay. Their pervasiveness gives legal citizens less leverage to negotiate their pay. I think the honest solution to illegal immigration is to seek ways to make legal immigration and naturalization more reasonably accessible while also cracking down on illegal hiring practices.  I DONT think the solution is to reserve our less desirable work to a slave class of any sort. I'm not for unions, but the negotiating power and well being of the American labor force should be protected always.  If the pay reflects the labor, people will do the work. Blue collar Americans do all sorts of disgusting, difficult, and/or dangerous work as long as it is at a premium.  This article is more about the negotiating power of americans lost to corporations taking skilled work and outsourcing it ~~at minimum wage levels of employment~~ (article said $60k or more) to those desperate for a living wage and/or citizenship. How to address that, I don't know.   Edit:not min wage, $60k The most obvious example would be a situation where a Company is growth constrained, but cash flow positive. It may have enough cash flow to service $10 million of debt, but it needs to build a new facility that will cost $20 million. There is the option to raise debt and equity or just raise equity and move quicker to getting that facility up and running.   There are also situations where debt is used to replace equity (i.e. dividend recapitalization or leveraged share redemption). "Yes. The definition of unreasonable shows as ""not guided by or based on good sense."" 100% years require a high risk. Can your one stock double, or even go up three fold? Sure, but that would likely be a small part of your portfolio. Overall, long term, you are not likely to beat the market by such high numbers.  That said, I had 2 years of returns well over 100%. 1998, and 1999. The S&P was up 26.7% and 19.5%, and I was very leverage in high tech stock options. As others mentioned, leverage was key. (Mark used the term 'gearing' which I think is leverage). When 2000 started crashing, I had taken enough off the table to end the year down 12% vs the S&P -10%, but this was down from a near 50% gain in Q1 of that year. As the crash continued, I was no longer leveraged and haven't been since. The last 12 years or so, I've happily lagged the S&P by a few basis points (.04-.02%).  Also note, Buffet has returned an amazing 15.9%/yr on average for the last 30 years (vs the S&P 11.4%). 16% is far from 100%. The last 10 year, however, his return was a modest 8.6%, just .1% above the S&P." Not illegal, its called treasury stock; happens all the time. Its used to increase the equity (and in theory, stock price) for the remaining shareholders.  A public company won't be a able to repurchase all of its shares unless the company has decided to go private. In that case, a person or other entity will usually purchase all of the outstanding shares of the company, usually at a premium. Another form of 'shareholder' activism. You might be able to buy a single share, which it seems would cost around $35, attend the AGM, and ask questions and/or shout or sing and delay proceedings. There would certainly be security guards or police ready to remove protesters at an AGM. I know this is the rule in general but what about things like De Beers diamond company artificially inflating the price of diamonds? From what I've read there are lots and lots of diamonds in storage but they control the flow. Couldn't this tactic work with other products/commodities using the right marketing campaigns? The CEO of a public company can, and often does, buy (and sell) the stock of his company. In fact, frequently the stock of the company is part of the compensation for the CEO. What makes this legal and fair is that the CEO files with the SEC an announcement before he buys (or sells) the stock. These announcements allow us 'in the dark' people enough warning ahead of time.  See, for example, the trades of UTX stock by their public officers. As for trading on information about other companies, if I am not mistaken... that is why Martha Stewart wound up in prison. So, yeah, it does happen. I hope it is caught more often than not.  On a related note, have you seen the movie 'Wall Street' with Charlie Sheen and Michael Douglas? There's an interesting paper, Does Investor Attention Affect Stock Prices? (Sandhya et al), where researchers look at related stock tickers.  When a large cap, better-known stock jumps, smaller firms with similar symbols also rise.   Pretty nuts -- I interviewed the author of the paper [here](http://www.tradestreaming.com/?p=3745). There's also a transcript.