i appreciate the fullness of your response, and i have been keeping this question in the back of my head since i opened the thread. more deliberation and analysis needs to be done before i can honestly respond to your many other hypotheses. but for now, this one sticking point:

i opened this thread with the hypothesis that "TA-appropriate moves" maximize the profit/risk equation. you've brought up many good points why this may not be the case.

however, the quoted point above speaks to a very important feature of this problem, that is the feature of the information that the players have.

we all can agree, i hope, that the manipulator does not know, with any certainty, how the market will react to his attempt at manipulation. the best he can do, just like every other participant, is to guess. doesn't this alone invalidate all theories of direct price manipulation?

--arepo