> Lebed professes that he did nothing wrong – he did nothing different from Wall Street analysts
Except analysts usually can't trade stocks. Short sellers can. In theory, libel law makes that safe, but when it's a 15-year-old playing the penny stocks, the company won't notice or have the legal firepower to chase down a /r/wallstreetbets user.
When I googled it, it was a little murky on if it's allowed, and sometimes it was the analyst's employer that banned it. What is legal is different parts of the same ~bank not being as independent as they should be, so the kid's argument that the big boys do the same thing wasn't entirely wrong.
Except analysts usually can't trade stocks. Short sellers can. In theory, libel law makes that safe, but when it's a 15-year-old playing the penny stocks, the company won't notice or have the legal firepower to chase down a /r/wallstreetbets user.