The Global Game of Manipulating Share Prices

Pings, Pivots, and Presidential Tweets

Stock markets are supposed to be temples of rationality: supply, demand, fundamentals. In reality, they’re jittery creatures, spooked by rumours, soothed by soundbites, and whipped into frenzy by a single post on social media. They don’t hum with logic. They twitch with gossip.

The global game of manipulating share prices isn’t new. From 18th-century “stock jobbers” in London to 21st-century meme‑stock Redditors, the trick has always been the same: create noise, shift sentiment, cash in before the music stops. It’s not economics. It’s choreography, and someone’s always rehearsing backstage.

Classic manipulation is the “pump and dump”: hype a stock, watch it soar, then sell before it crashes. But in today’s globalised markets, the tricks are more elaborate:

• Short‑and‑distort: spread bad news, profit from falling prices.
• Algorithmic nudges: bots amplifying rumours until they feel like truth.
• Policy pivots: leaders making announcements that send markets lurching like economic jump scares.

Trump’s All-Caps Market Moves

In April 2025, Trump was accused of playing a “reverse pump and dump” with tariffs. On a Wednesday morning, he posted on Truth Social in all caps:
“THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!!”
At that moment, markets were tanking on fears of his new tariffs. Hours later, he announced a pause on the harshest measures. Stocks rebounded, the Dow surged nearly 3,000 points, and anyone who’d followed his morning advice made a tidy profit.

Critics called it “corruption in plain sight.” Supporters said he was simply calming investors. Either way, it showed how one man’s words could move trillions and how the line between reassurance and manipulation is paper-thin. Or tweet-thin.

Trump wasn’t the first leader to spook markets with words, but he might be the first to do it like a day trader.
Imagine a president with a Bloomberg terminal in one hand and a Truth Social app in the other, treating the global economy like a meme stock.
It’s not just Trump, of course. Central bankers, finance ministers, and CEOs all know their words can move markets. The difference is that most try to be boring. Trump? He turned market chaos into performance art.

The backlog of manipulation is global:

• China: state-backed funds buying shares to prop up markets.
• Europe: regulators chasing insider trading scandals.
• Wall Street: hedge funds accused of collusion in short squeezes.

Markets are supposed to be free. In reality, they’re constantly nudged, massaged, and occasionally manhandled. It’s less “invisible hand” and more “very visible elbow.”

For ordinary investors, the emotional toll is real:

• Anxiety: watching pensions swing wildly on a politician’s whim.
• Distrust: wondering if the game is rigged for insiders.
• Exhaustion: trying to keep up with news cycles that move faster than reason.

Markets run on trust. Manipulation erodes it.
When I see a market swing, do I ask: is this fundamentals, or theatre?
Who benefits from the chaos and who pays the price?
What would markets look like if leaders treated words as responsibility, not leverage?

What if we stopped treating markets as casinos for the powerful and started treating them as commons for the many?

• Transparency over secrecy
• Stability over spectacle
• Long-term care over short-term chaos

Because when markets are manipulated, it’s not just billionaires who win or lose. It’s pensions, savings, livelihoods. It’s the quiet economy of everyday life, rattled by someone’s tweet.

It’s whispers, tweets, pivots, and pauses.
It’s hedge funds and heads of state, Redditors and regulators.
It’s a game where the rules are bent, the stakes are high, and the players aren’t always who you think.

Trump’s tariff tweets were just one chapter in a long story: the story of markets as theatre, where words move billions and manipulation hides in plain sight.

The invitation is to stop pretending markets are neutral. They’re not.
They’re human, emotional, and easily gamed.
And until we admit that the global game will keep playing us one whisper, one pivot, one all-caps post at a time.