Speaking of what else is illegal. The SEC says thi
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Aggressive shorters, and short selling pools, will sometimes hire stock “bashers”, people paid to post negative articles on blogs and message boards. Their goal is to put out negative news on a company or its products in an effort to cause the company problems and insure the stock declines so their negative bets pay off. Others will put up “flash orders” advertising to sell a large number of shares in an effort to drive down the price. Thus entrepreneurial companies not only need to fight the battles of developing new products and markets, they have to stave off the short sellers in the meantime. This growing culture of betting against a company for the sake of short-term trading profits (regardless of economic consequences) has negative economic repercussions.