The Brains Trust - 2016, page-10442

Afternoon Brains Trust,

There are always a lot of statements made on the stock threads like "THEY are holding the SP down", "THEY are manipulating the SP", without much explanation on who THEY are. So that leads me to my question; say a short is placed on the XSO / XJO etc, does the broker place a counter buy / sell on the market indices which would require the same trade to be made across individual businesses within that indices? This would mean that "THEY" are really just a broker making the opposite trade on the company posters are insinuating are being manipulated. I hope that makes sense. Can't really explain it any simpler sorry.