Tales That Defy the Ordinary

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Pump and Dump: When the Stock Market Goes Full Toilet Mode

Some scams wear suits. This one wears a Hawaiian shirt and sunglasses, shouting "TO THE MOON!" from the back of a rented Lamborghini.

The pump-and-dump is not new. It did not spring fully formed from the meme-stained depths of Reddit or the crypto gutter. It’s older than disco, nastier than Prohibition, and slipperier than a Wall Street apology. It's the financial world’s dirty secret that everyone knows and no one learns from.

This is a story of greed, hype, lies, and the kind of gullibility that keeps the market spinning.

 

Writting on a toilet roll reading “Don’t Panic” – symbolic of panic selling, market crashes, and pump and dump schemes.
Pump and Dump: From Jazz to Jail Time

I. The Original Swindle: Livermore and the Jazz Age Hustle

Long before TikTok influencers were shilling dog coins, there was Jesse Livermore. Born in 1877 and trading by chalkboard before the Federal Reserve even existed, Livermore turned market manipulation into high art. He didn’t call it a scam. He called it strategy.

Livermore bought up cheap stocks, paid off newspapers to sing their praises, and watched as everyday investors swarmed in. Then he sold. Price tanked. Profit secured. Victims confused.

He made (and lost) millions in the 1920s, manipulating the same speculative chaos that led to the 1929 crash. Fittingly, Livermore died broke in 1940. Self-inflicted bullet. Final trade closed.

His method? Hype, dump, disappear. That formula never went out of style. It just went digital.

II. Wall Street Theatre: The Mechanics of the Con

Here’s the playbill:

  1. Stage One: Identify a garbage stock. Penny shares, low volume, zero prospects.

  2. Stage Two: Buy in quietly.

  3. Stage Three: Hype it loudly. Paid promotions, fake news, insider whispers.

  4. Stage Four: Watch the suckers flood in.

  5. Stage Five: Dump your holdings at the top.

  6. Stage Six: Watch the price collapse. Deny everything.

Rinse. Repeat. Apologise if subpoenaed.

This isn’t investing. It’s theatre. Hype plays the lead. Greed runs the lighting.

III. Cold Calls, Hot Tips, and Boiler Rooms

In the 1980s and 1990s, boiler rooms took over. Real phones. Real voices. Real lies.

Jordan Belfort made it infamous. Selling garbage stocks to naive investors while doing enough coke to stun a bear, Belfort turned Stratton Oakmont into the most profitable con this side of Vegas. His trick? Confidence. The voice of God telling you this penny stock was the next IBM.

The SEC eventually shut him down. He went to jail. Then he wrote a memoir and got Leonardo DiCaprio to play him. Late-stage capitalism gave him a second act as a motivational speaker.

That, too, is a kind of dump.

IV. Crypto: Same Scam, Faster Exit

Crypto didn’t invent the pump-and-dump. It just made it faster, shinier, and harder to regulate.

Telegram groups, Twitter bots, YouTube hype channels. A coin nobody’s heard of pumps 10,000% in a day. Someone on Discord swears they’ve got insider info. By the time you’ve Googled "what is $FARTCOIN," the dump has already happened.

Developers vanish. Wallets are emptied. Discord goes silent.

Crypto made pump-and-dumps frictionless. No earnings reports. No fundamentals. Just vibes.

V. Hack, Pump, and Run

The cybercriminals joined the party. They hack into brokerage accounts, buy trash stocks, trigger algorithmic interest, then sell before the smoke clears.

Victims don’t even know they were part of the scam until they see their monthly statement.

It’s not just dirty now. It’s digital.

VI. Is the Whole Market a Scam?

Not quite. But sometimes it acts like one.

High-frequency trading siphons pennies millions of times a second. Insiders still whisper sweet nothings to each other. Meme stocks swing like yo-yos in the hands of bored retail traders looking for a hit of dopamine.

The 2008 crash? A pump-and-dump on a global scale. Mortgage bonds hyped to the heavens, rated AAA, then exploded like party balloons filled with petrol.

And yet the markets endure. Why? Because buried beneath the scams are actual companies, doing actual things. Sometimes.

VII. War, Plague, and the Panic Button

Markets don’t hate tragedy. They hate uncertainty.

In WWII, markets dipped, then soared as victory neared. In 2020, COVID crashed the Dow—then tech stocks rebounded so fast it felt like cheating.

Why? Stimulus. Algorithms. Hopium. Whatever works.

VIII. Don’t Be the Exit Liquidity

Here’s how you lose money:

  • Listen to strangers promising 1000% gains.

  • Believe the hype.

  • Buy at the top.

  • Bag-hold into oblivion.

Here’s how you avoid it:

  • Read the filings.

  • Ask what the company does.

  • Question the urgency.

  • If it sounds like a scam, it probably is.

Pump-and-dumps exist because they work. Not for you. For them.

Further Reading & Sources

Final Word:

The pump-and-dump isn’t some outdated relic. It’s alive, mutated, and possibly tweeting as we speak. Stay sharp. Ask questions. Don’t confuse noise for news.

And remember: if it smells like a scam, walks like a scam, and shows up on Telegram at 3am offering "guaranteed moonshots" — you’re the product, not the partner.

 


VLADTV meets Jordan Belfort. The Wolf of Wall Street. Money, power, spectacle.

Also see: Fleecing the Flock: A History of Wall Street’s Con Game — the spiritual sibling to this article. More fraud, more flair, same scent of scorched money.

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