As my Business Finance lecturer Asjeet would say, "there's no such thing as a free lunch." However Taiwan seems to be handing them out like nobody's business with market manipulations that would have made Rene Rivkin jump with glee.
It's been a week since I started a share market game and already I have noticed some very dubious activities. You see, here in Taiwan there are so-called "experts" and "professors" on TV that teach you how to read various kinds of technical information, each having their own special method of deciphering the mysteries of the stock market. "The dip in the line here, followed by this squiggle means BUY! BUY! BUY!" They obviously don't believe the market is efficient.
When we were building our portfolio at the start of the game, as if by magic, a SMS arrives telling us that such-and-such expert is recommending a certain stock as he believes that it will sky-rocket. Since we weren't playing with real money, we decided to put it to the test. Indeed its price has been rising steadily with very one-sided buying and no selling. Obviously someone was pressing the buttons. ASIC would be having a field day if this happened in Australia.
Anyways, below is a typical traffic jam in Taipei city.
We got Hyundai's and Subaru's (don't worry, inside joke).
The Chaz Chop 