manipulation

I am hearing a lot in recent times about the bots and shorting and manipulation.

What does not make sense is this:

How can big insto's etc have access to shares that are not theirs to sell (and short), make a profit out of the short, return the borrowed shares to the owner at the owners loss.

I mean what is the market mechanism to do this ?

Where does one get shares to borrow without having to pay for the full price of them at the time of borrowing.


I mean it is NOT possible that shares that are mine can be borrowed at a nominal fee to someone else is it? That would be illegal surely.

I am ignorant of the back end mechanisms of how this actually works and it does not make sense to me.

I keep hearing about people saying that the market is manipulated and the bots are doing this or the other but as far as I am aware there is a buy price and a sell price. If someone relentlessly sells heaps of stock so the SP goes plenty down then the persons that owned that stock are making a loss right ? Sure they can short but that would be a zero sum game (price of purchase - price at sell loss equals the gains for shorting).

I have NEVER understood the claims from many and would really like it explained in simple terms

Can anyone ?