How many days/months has this been going on now??How is the...

How many days/months has this been going on now??

How is the Market manipulated?
Education - The Basics

This informative article was contributed by EMB who is a regular poster on another popular stock forum.
Market manipulation

Market manipulation describes a deliberate attempt to interfere with the free and fair operation of the market and create artificial, false or misleading appearances with respect to the price of, or market for, a stock. This is typically done either by spreading false or misleading information in order to influence others to trade in a particular way, or by using buying and selling orders deliberately to affect prices or turnover, in order to create an opportunity for profit.

Examples of market manipulation for which ASX Markets Supervision monitors include:

Price manipulation.

Placing buy or sell orders (or both) into the market in order to change or maintain the price of a stock. The motives for attempting to do this vary:

To increase the value of a position in the stock for accounting or portfolio valuation purposes; To be able to issue new shares at a higher price; or To cause such a price rise that other investors are attracted to the stock, creating additional demand and higher prices that the manipulator can sell into.

Marking the close.

?Marking the close? involves buying or selling a stock near the close of the day's trading, with the objective of affecting the closing price. This might be done to avoid margin calls (when the trader's position is not self-financed), to help stymie a takeover or rights issue, to support a flagging price or to affect the valuation of a fund manager?s portfolio at the end of a quarter (called "window dressing" . A common indicator is trading in small parcels of the security just before the market closes, which results in a higher closing price