[cm2187]

IANAL but what he is doing is very close to a pump and dump scheme, which is absolutely market manipulation. And as often with market manipulations, there is a thin and blury line between acceptable behaviour and criminal behaviour (for instance front running vs pre-hedging).

An investor talking up their book isn't market manipulation, but those tacitly coordinated efforts to buy an illiquid stock to artificially raise the price seem to me fairly squarely on the wrong side of the line. The only problem being the "tacit" aspect of the strategy (kind of like mafia boss "take care of him"). This guy doesn't give a direct instruction, but clearly everyone understands his signal as an instruction.

[hanniabu]

If him just posting an image is a PnD then so is Jim Cramer, motley fool, etc telling people which stocks to buy