When it comes to the stock market’s regulatory and legal side, few words are as broad in their definition and meaning as manipulation. Stocks are always manipulated by large and small entities in (mostly) legal and ethical ways – that is the stock market’s nature. But some forms of stock manipulation are illegal, like front running and naked short selling. Naked short selling is the shorting of a stock without borrowing the underlying stock to short. A recent example of this is the percentage of short interest in GameStop by hedge funds in early 2021 – hedge funds were short 130% of GameStop’s float. In other words, hedge funds had 30% more shares short than are available.