No, it's important to emphasize (in case someone is not familiar), you can be arrested for pumping up a stock while you hold it if you don't disclose your position in every statement about the company you make.

And I'd be remiss to not mention that disclosing said conflict of interest actually makes people trust you more—even though they shouldn't.

So not only does that regulation not accomplish what it is supposed to accomplish, it actually causes the reverse.

Interesting. Do you have a link to a study about this? I personally ignore any research from people in stock positions.

Yes, lots of social science studies have been done on it.

The book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Dr. Robert Cialdini covers this (and similar) phenomenons in detail. Huge eye opener.

> I personally ignore any research from people in stock positions.

I (and everyone, if asked) agree that's the rational thing to do. But most people don't behave that way in practice, unfortunately.

I don't have a good solution, the law benefits people like you and I who will act correctly on the information, but hurts people who are vulnerable—those who acts incorrectly on the information.

There is a proxy between believing that the person who purchased the stock and disclosed the position as honest enough to put skin in the game for the company they believe in, and mistaking it for simply this person's confidence of their ability to fool others.

This article is about the same phenomenon in the context of doctors recommending treatments they specialize in, disclosing their likely bias towards that treatment, and that disclosure making it more likely their patients take their recommendation: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/10/opinion/sunday/the-paradox...

is there a similar set of penalties for a company, say Google, saying that they won't buy with the express intention of this reducing the value so that they can in fact buy?

I was reading recently about the St Jude Medical incident where their stock was shorted by a company that produced a paper on security vulnerabilities in their products. This is currently going to court.

I wonder whether it's the same in all scenarios?

There comes a point where it's just negotiation and gambling. If I don't want to buy your burning house because I think you want too much it's fine for me to wait because I know the price will likely come down. There is always a chance that somebody else will grab it before my trigger point, but that's the gamble.