For most stocks, commodities and other investments, the market is just too big to be manipulated. What looks like a lot of money to you and me — and is a lot of money for an individual — is just noise to the overall market.
That's not to say that they don't ever try. Most notoriously, the Hunt Brothers pushed silver up to about $54 in 1980. They declared bankruptcy and were convicted of conspiring to manipulate the market. By the way, when they started acquiring silver in 1973, they were among the very wealthiest people in the US and world.
Now, when it comes to illiquid penny stocks, you may know that the story is quite different. Then you do have cases of "pump and dump."
That's where somebody buys a small, over the counter stock, then somehow pumps it up. Most commonly used are Internet investment chat rooms and forums, but financial newsletters have been accused of this too. If you can get a few hundred or thousand people to buy the penny stock, the price will go up. Then you dump it.
Or you can do the opposite. Short a stock, then bad mouth it until the price goes down where you want. I forget the catchy phrase for that.
But notice that these scammers are not using their money to artificially raise or lower price of stock, just word of mouth.
I don't believe that using your own money to push up price of a stock or option — by buying more and more — makes mathematical sense. When you run out of money, demand will return to normal, and so will the stock price, leaving you holding a lot of overpriced shares and options.
Remember that in the money options go up (or down) in price dollar for dollar compared to price rise (or fall) of underlying stock.
best, Rick
Thanks.
From what I can tell, there are thousands of advisory services. Some I know of have several products (like schaeffer.com). Others just have one.
In any event, the number of subscribers needed is dependent upon your fixed and variable costs, not of someone elses. My startup costs are fairly fixed, so then, it's mainly x subscribers at $y to break even, and then after that, it's profit until such point I need another person to manage the flow of information, etc.
The key in differentiating yourself is your performance and your advertising. Both will get you more clients, however, your performance will help keep them.
Hope that helps!