Market manipulation on shoestring budget

The above image shows the top gainers at the Colombo Stock Exchange on the 28th of February. MNany of them are rather illiquid but look at how their prices have jumped during the last session. Then look at the volumes - it's single digit for most them. TSML (Tea Small Holder Factories) jumped 40% with just one share being traded. In the old days if you wanted to manipulate a share or the indices you needed to spend at least a hundred thousand rupees (which is not a big deal either) but now you need only Rs 40.00

Does it work the other way also? Do people push the prices down? Apparently not. As the table shows, most of the shares have declined on decent volumes. The reason that people are less likely to push the prices down is due to the fact that the CSE does not support short selling. Thus it's hard to profit by pushing prices down.