I'm not rich, and I take sell-offs as a signal to buy up bargain stock. It's neither fraud nor a conspiracy, it is just a trading strategy.

That said, the very wealthy can and do influence the market in unethical or simply unfair ways, and they often do not have laws enforced against them anyway. This is not a problem with the markets so much in my view as a structural problem of capitalism which highlights why laissez-faire capitalism is inherently unworkable. It's not like the cheating is confined to the stock market. It manifests in a zillion ways -- keeping workers on subsistence levels of pay, failing to keep commitments, undermining collective bargaining when that's the employee response to broken promises, raping the environment, raping consumers, stuff like that.

Oldest trick in the book. Make a rumor make the stock jump up big time when its near peak sell off a large chunk causing a panic the poor who can't afford to ride it out sell off and take big looses. Then the rich buy it up at bargin prices. Than the poor think its safe start buying again and the roller coaster goes again.

The stock market is a fraud. Manipulated to exploit the non upper class.

Why did the auto makers, other than Ford need a bailout? Simple, companies that are held by stock holders no longer can hold a money reserve because by law that goes to stock holders. Ford family has 51% and keeps back large reserves for bad times. And, we, the people, are forced to bail out the rich stock holders again and again.

It's the way it was designed to work. We need to change the design.

Call it what you will. It is what it is.