Ann: Financing Update, page-384

That is why people favour conspiracies such as manipulation across HC on stocks that don't go up.

Some people can't fathom that the shareprice is where it is because of fundamental reasons or risks as they view the shareprice as bags higher than where it is.

So the 'easy out' is to blame some external source such as a market maipulator that cannot be proven to exist or not exist one way or the other.

The conspiracy serves to provide hope that once the manipulation is finished then the shareprice will skyrocket and all will be good.

If you check out most of the popular HC stocks that haven't performed well or remain static (ie do anything other than up), it tends to be manipulation that is blamed rather than some other reason such as management or commodity prices.