Can a company move the price of its stock up and down at will?

Question

Are there regulations that prohibit a company from raising their stock price or lowering it?

Answer 1

An unscrupulous company can somewhat. There are also legitimate way of doing so.

Unscrupulous: issue a rosy forecast and that will drive the price of the stock up. Issue a bleak forecast and that will drive the price of the stock down. The 2nd option has been successfully used by companies when they are getting ready to issue stock options to their key employees. They want to drive the price down so the employees will get a better price.
Other methods of driving the price down: announce a one time write off of assets, which have been sitting on the books for years waiting for such an opportunity. Announce the sale of an asset for a large one time gain.

More legitimate methods: Announce a stock buy back. Increase the dividend. Fire an underperforming CEO. (Did wonders for HP). Announce a product recall (to drive the price down). Announce an oil discovery, gold discovery, platinum discovery, diamond discovery, etc. Announce that they are buying out or merging with their major competitor.

Answer 2

A company can absolutely change the price. Stock splits and reverse splits do exactly that. Doesn't change the value at all, but you can make the price whatever you want it to be by just changing the number of shares outstanding. If you have 100,000 shares at $10, you have a $1,000,000 company. Now if you want $100 stock, just do a 1-10 reverse split and presto, you have 10,000 shares of $100 stock. Still a $1,000,000 market cap. Or going the other way, do a 10-1 split and you have 1,000,000 shares of $1 stock. Happens all the time.

Answer 3

In a public company, the company officials have
no direct control of the stock's current selling value.
Think of it this way: If I sell a share and you buy a
share, I'm selling it for what I can get and you
are buying it for as little as possible - the company
itself is not involved in the process.

However, if they start buying it as fast as they can,
the market may perceive that it is suddenly of
great value, and the price goes up.

Correspondingly, if the company starts selling
it as fast as it can, the price may go down.

And of course, they can always announce that
some really good thing or really bad thing
has just happened, and the stock may change
price accordingly.

However, there is no direct control.

Answer 4

a company stock price at initial start up may be determined by the number stocks on offer the company size its market share, there after the company share price cannot be directly controlled it is now left in the hands of the market demand and supply, revaluations or stock adjustments can be made but they are only done in certain situations, look up more info at www.investopedia.com

Answer 5

consistent with gasoline fee. Algore and the far left environmentalist (the old US Communist party) want gasoline fees above $5.00 a gal. If Bush had no longer been in the White abode on the time there could have been a push to proceed to shifting the fee up. the click might have stated the positives of the intense gasoline fee. Obama choose the fee to recover from $4.00 a gal. while you evaluate this is believed to be the fee in the past we get overly disillusioned. it is likewise believed to be the point the place we initiate thinking approximately procuring the small autos that the Left is attempting to rigidity on us. So Obama choose the intense fees to have the skill to rigidity the small autos on us and Algore choose it to allow the Left to learn extra of our freedom. consistent with unemployment the Left will proceed to blame Bush and Reagan only as Clinton did. And with a Left wing press to help and cover up for them the universal voter would not understand what is going on. (regrettably many don't choose to be attentive to what happening). consistent with the industry the Left wing press document this using fact the wealthy getting their what getting wealthy on the returned of the undesirable. returned using click and absence of guidance many don't understand what is going on and how that's hurting the undesirable and center type extra effective than the wealthy.

Answer 6

It can be manipulated to a certain extent, especially if they have very deep pockets to make artificial bull trends - Technical analysts can be easily misled into these. Rumors can also be a way of manipulating the fundamental analysts. Manipulation can be a crime though.

Answer 7

IT IS CONTROLLED BY THE MARKET