What they did is totally unacceptable... there was no fraud involved; if there had been I could sympathize with such actions.

A lot of people seem to be wetting themselves over all this, but seem to conveniently forget that stock trading is ultimately a zero sum game. For every willing buyer, there is a willing seller. Every person who sells on the hunch that the stock will go down is matched with a buyer who buys on the hunch that the stock will go up... EVEN IF the whole thing was done on a lark to mess with The Big Players. I don't think anyone had a gun held to their heads...

The IRONY here is that mega-organizations are readily allowed to squash and bankrupt the individual players, but when those individuals push back and suddenly put the mega-organizations in peril by playing their own game against them, it's suddenly UNFAIR, and demands for SEC intervention is requested?