5 Steps In A Stock Pump and Dump

Step 1 – The Bait

This is the first step where the pumpers share the “good news” on a stock they bought earlier.

They spread the good news via personal emails lists, stock forums, money magazines, social media, words of mouth (via broker) or even go as far as getting the newspaper to write an article on this.

During The Bait stage, some popular sentences you always hear -

“The company is negotiating some hundreds of millions ringgit projects”

“The stock is undervalued and have huge upside potential”

“The stock is dirt cheap … you don’t want to miss out when the ‘good news” come out …. soon!”

“The stock is 20 cents with the target price (TP) of $1.20 …that’s a 500% gain!

Could this possibly be true?

Step 2 – The Rally

During this rally phase, the stock will start moving aggressively with the people who got the “good news” buying and pushing up the stock price and daily volumes 5 to 10 times higher than when the first “good news” posted as the bait was released. 

And every day, for the next week, next two weeks, next month, you’ll see those same subject lines with the same calls to action: Buy, buy, buy…good news coming soon! Target price $1.50 …. jump in now!

And if you’ve already bought, the goal is to get you to buy more.

Step 3 – The Sell Off

The stock pumper generally refer to this as a “temporary profit taking.” In other words, they’re blaming a group of investors taking some profits who are driving down the stock prices.

However, the more likely culprit here is that all those pumpers who bought up million-plus share positions early on and are starting to dump their shares onto a very artificial market.

Unfortunately for the other hapless investors, most of those shares were sales executed by these pumpers as the stock plummeted below the price where most of them bought in.

Step 4 – The Rebound

Eventually, with enough work, enough spam, and enough new names pouring in thinking they are getting a bargain, the selling tide abates and the stock moves up again.

During The Rebound, popular sentences you always hear -

“The stock is a bargain at this price, buy now before it move again!”

“The stock is technically oversold and ready to resume its rally!”

“I just bought 300 lots at this cheap price.Getting ready for the bounce.”

In the next couple of days, the price does indeed recover, maybe as much as double from its sell off lows.

Step 5 – The Demise

In this stage, the stock slowly drop and keep dropping for weeks and months till all the selling dry up.

There is no more “good news” or is usually the case, no news on the stock at all.

All the stock pumpers have left the stock and they are promoting a new hot stock to new investors.

All we know, based on the pumper’s subject line, was that any chance for more gains on the stock pretty much went up in smoke the moment they came out with a new stock pick.

Conclusion

Legitimately promoting stocks is accepted, ethical, and if done right, profitable for everyone – investors and owners alike.

However, an evil cousin of legitimate promoting is a stock pump and dump.

Designed to be little more than a short-term artificial boost to the share price of a stock, stock pump and dump generally last only as long as it takes for those who financed the pump to sell their shares on their unsuspecting fellow investors.

Don’t be fooled by these stock pump and dump scams in the stock market by learning how to invest wisely on stocks.