Supply and demand two levers to steer the price By controlling two levers : supply and demand, short sellers might be able to force the stock within a desired price range while they cover.
Increasing supply:
1- by using short ladder down, stop loss hunting, wash/jitney trade… and
2- by scaring existing shareholders to push them to sell.
3- by hiring paid bashers and flooding the supply side with shares sold short
Decreasing demand:
by scaring potential buyers and dissuading them from buying the stock to crush demand (repeated posts telling people the price will keep going down and giving mental references like 99, 50 cents,zero…)
The combined effect of this engineered pricing through increased supply and decreased demand causes a self-fulfilling prophecy of depressed pricing The economic uncertainty surrounding recession fears helps the short sellers create an atmosphere of volatility and urgency that they use to their advantage by enticing people to sell asap hoping they can force existing shareholders to capitulate and dissuading potential buyers from getting involved.
For this scheme to work short sellers must convince as many as possible to surrender without putting up a fight confusing correlation and causation while pushing different cards to convince and channel different crowds to give up their shares.
Let’s get real a moment why would so many people invest so much ATM(Attention, Time and Money) to convince you to sell while hypocritically claiming they only do it to help you out? Because they see you as their cash ATM.