[paulhodge]

Yeah, with so much trading volume, it doesn't seem hard to blend in with the crowd. Whenever there's a big Musk tweet, there's already tons of news-based traders that immediately react and earn huge profits.

You could set up a plausible history ahead of time by doing innocent TSLA trades. Maybe establish a pattern of regularly scheduled trades. And then it just so happens that the fake tweet comes out right around when your scheduled trade was going to execute.

[Sebb767]

You still need to keep your cool and explain that to the FBI agent at your door. OPSEC is hard.

Not to mention that this requires a lot of upfront time and capital and depends on no circuit breaker being pulled, which would be quite likely giving the high amount of damage and blatant market manipulation.

[TigeriusKirk]

You don't even have to trade the stock you attack publicly. You could trade a highly correlated stock. Maybe you wouldn't make quite as much, but you would be much harder to find.

[michaelmarion]

Great point. Bloomberg's Matt Levine has been referenced elsewhere in this discussion, but he had this exact point [1] in today's newsletter regarding market reactions to COVID vaccine news:

"Signs of progress toward a coronavirus vaccine by Moderna propelled most corners of the stock market higher. … Most of the gains followed the release of a new study suggesting Moderna had reached a breakthrough with its coronavirus vaccine, setting the stage for a larger trial at the end of this month. Cruise-ship operators, airliners and other stocks sensitive to the coronavirus crisis led the stock market higher. Shares of Moderna rose $5.18, or 6.9%, to $80.22.

Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. was up 21.2%. Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings Ltd. was up 20.7%. Carnival Corp. was up 16.2%. American Airlines Group Inc. was also up 16.2%. United Airlines Holdings was up 14.6%. The biggest gainers were the vaccine-sensitive industries, not Moderna itself."

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-07-16/a-vacc...