A whale investor can make the market take an unusual shape, but not for long. When a person buys or sells billions of dollars of bitcoins at once, it is normal for the market to behave differently for a while. But he alone cannot control the entire market as he wishes. But yes I believe that some part of the market can be controlled by whale investors but the whole market is not dependent on them.
Control over the market with immediate changes of the chosen parameters is not what we are mainly talking about whales influence. Moreover it has no sense for them in such control. Main idea is in organizing of a long trends: they provoke prolonging or changing of the trends in a chosen market and earn on how these trends go forward based on that. No need of controlling in each minute.