1,000 is not that much, spread across a few exchanges.
There are near to 13,000,000 BTC, and more appearing each day.
A Whale would have to have access to a substantial proportion of that. Someone with 1,000 BTC is just someone with a lot of BTC
Karpeles, BTC-e, Silk Road (of old) were Whales.
A Whale moves the market at will. He/she would have only a few competitors. They will be in cahoots, although they will all be shit scared of being out-manoeuvred by the others.
Only a fraction of that 13 million is actually in exchanges at any given time however.