$GIGGLE Why has the traditional 'pump and dump' become less appealing?

The traditional 'pump and dump' model has several fatal weaknesses:

1. High cost: It requires a substantial investment of real money to continuously buy in order to create a strong upward trend.

2. High uncertainty: During the pumping process, it may attract other savvy large funds to 'ride along', becoming their selling opponents, and may even face a counterattack.

3. Obvious targets: Dramatic price fluctuations easily attract regulatory attention and strong community backlash.

Why has 'grinding stop loss' become a better strategy?

Today's traders are essentially engaged in a 'liquidity hunting' game. Their target is not the entire capital of retail investors, but rather to precisely strike at the most vulnerable and predictable portion of the market — the stop-loss orders of leveraged long positions and the liquidation lines of collateralized loans.

The market structure change behind this is:

· Widespread high leverage environment: Contract trading (futures) has become mainstream, with a large number of retail investors entering the market with 10x, 20x, or even higher leverage. Their stop-loss points are like beacons in the dark, clearly marked on the market.

· Prevalence of automated trading: Programmatic trading and stop-loss orders make market behavior predictable. Traders know that as soon as the price touches a certain key point, it will trigger a series of automatic sell orders, forming a 'liquidity pit'.

The brilliance of the 'grinding stop loss' strategy lies in:

1. Extremely low cost: There is no need to significantly raise prices; it only requires a relatively small amount of capital to create repeated small fluctuations and false breakouts below key resistance levels, continuously triggering the stop losses of high-leverage longs.

2. Controllable risk: Price fluctuations within a range mean that the trader's own position risk is very low, making it unlikely to trigger a systemic collapse or strong attention.

3. Sustainable harvesting: As long as there are leveraged players in the market, this strategy can be executed periodically and repetitively, like collecting rent. Every small decline ('smashing a bearish line') can capture a batch of concentrated stop-loss orders, making it highly efficient.