Anything with a lower market cap is easier to manipulate. This is true too in the penny stock market. Enter with buy and sell limits and protect yourself. Otherwise sharks will be waiting to hose you.
Yeah, I was thinking exactly about a correlation to the penny stock market. People need to be a bit more concerned with where the pump is going though. A pump too strong will carry people away and when those whales pull out, everyone's stuck in a weird limbo with the price dropping. Honestly, I don't think people should really get into altcoin pump and dumps as well as penny stocks because there's no security for you and you can get carried away so quickly.