Disclosure: I’m a shareholder in ERTS. Did you hear that Apple might buy them!?

The stock market, short term, is a sucker’s game. It’s weakly efficient, which means there’s not a lot of money in it unless you deal in bulk. Contrarily, the real estate market is grossly inefficient and has a lot of low-hanging fruit for small operators. This is basic economics: Water is cheaper than diamonds. There’s not a lot of scarcity in the stock market, short term.

Generally the rich use the stock market to transfer wealth up from the middle classes by selling IPOs. Here’s another neat trick:

Step 1: Buy a few million dollars of a depressed stock, for example ERTS.

Step 2: Start a rumor on your blog that the stock you just bought is a takeover target. The internet will do the rest, unthinkingly.

Step 3: ??? Let hobbyist middle-class day traders, gullible youth, and maybe a hedge fund or two speculate. While they pump, you dump.

Step 4: Profit!

I’m pretty pleased with this market manipulation — woo! It’s still going up! — because it benefits me directly. There’s a saying: Buy on fact, sell on rumor. This is what that means.