ShmoopTube

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Finance a la shmoop what is painting the tape?

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all right tape as in ticker tape should be white with black letters and numbers [New York Stock exchange ticker tape appears]

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on it and that's it painting it is clearly a sign that you're painting over

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something or hiding something and in fact painting the tape is an illegal way

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to try and manipulate stock prices in essence it works like this

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Moe and Larry decide that if they show tons of volume

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suddenly traded in a given stock that "somebody will think something's up"

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like a takeover is coming yeah yeah that's the ticket [Moe speaks to Larry]

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Google's buying them for a big price for sure and note that painting the tape is

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actually a common phenomenon in social media since those stocks are ones that

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they talk about where one lonely bitter and angry former postal worker can buy a [Man panting at a computer]

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dozen old used Dell computers to be that social media promulgator and those

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tie differently into the internet with different IP addresses so that remotely

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it looks like they're owned by twelve different people with twelve different

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opinions all coming at you at the same time recommending you buy this stock or

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sell that stock right well that blogger a social media person then posts on a [Social media post of basketball game appears]

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given topic like curling sucks and then their second fake account replies yes of

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course it does curling is for idiots and their third

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account replies, well curling should be banned from the Olympics you see that

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guy's gut and well you get the idea things get incendiary in the stock

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market this way as well so if Moe and Larry trade tons of shares [Moe and Larry throwing shares at each other]

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back and forth and a big spike of volume lots of other institutional investors

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like the big ones may be enticed to buy in and then they drive the stock from

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say twelve bucks a share to eighteen at which point Moe and Larry will get out

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having made a fast tidy and very illegal profit they would have painted the [Moe and Larry celebrate as money falls on them]

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ticker tape to look like there was tons of activity on it

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tons of exciting takeover rumors and other forces to make the stock go up up

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up with lots of demand from investors all over the world when in fact

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there wasn't they were clearly fishing for someone else to come in and bid [Stock on a fishing line appears]

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things up so that they could sell make their dough and move on to some other

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scheme and well here's where that scheme usually ends you up....

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