Attempts to manipulate GOOG in thinly traded after hours impress nobody.

An interesting thing about herding behavior is how it can make the entire herd look either smart or stupid as a while while switching between the two in an eye blink.  The poster child for this line of thought is the Blue Angels flying team.  There is a leader who all of the others follow.  If he flies right then the group does amazing stunts.  But if he blows it, they all end up in the same fiery ball and impact crater.  The herding works by sending signals.  When the signals are no longer working to make the herd follow, chaos cannot be far off.

There have been many stories of market manipulation during the past 2 years (upward for stocks, downward for metals).  I consider manipulations really to be signals.  The amount of manipulation is usually small enough to be more of a market suggestion or even a test.  People have been talking about the mini "flash crashes" and subsequent recoveries in gold of late.  Trust me when I tell you that the "fat finger" story is laughable.  Professionals do not have fat fingers.  They input orders through computers which sanity check the action.  Do rogue traders exist?  Perhaps but unlikely.  But the fat fingers excuse for flash crashes is complete bull$hit.  These are simply pokes at the herd, carefully crafted, to gauge its reaction.  When the herd did not react with panic buying it was a clear signal not to fight the tape in the following trading day.  And so, as you can see below, they let GOOG shares free fall.