If you want to manipulate the market you throw down a huge amount of Bitcoins on the Ask side so you literally flood the market with coins thus making an "ask wall". This will (in theory) drive the prices down so that you can then buy-in artificially cheaper and reward yourself on the way back up when people follow.
Aha...
Why don't you also mention the reverse possibility of people throwing down a huge amount of bitcoins on the bid side to drive the prices up so they can sell at a high price ?
Actually why do all your post seem to be trying to rise the price of bitcoins ? And masking that as a "newbie helper" ! A bull in sheep's clothing !
P.S.
All you people thanking Flip for the advice bear (no pun intended) in mind he has his personal interests in manipulating other people's opinion, just like 99% other people here. Belief makes prices, not reason, and who controls belief controls prices.
Well anyone, after reading these points, can expand upon it with their own research. Nobody should take one source as gospel no matter how good it is, and it's not like he said anything wrong. Plus, what if his personal interests line up with mine?
It's the never ending battle of buyers vs sellers. Our entire net-worth continues to grow but unfortunately people refuse to see the truth, see the list of legitimate businesses that take Bitcoin
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Trade , and it continues to grow and grow every day. People are waking up to what this is, and slowly a better service will emerge that will compensate for the few flaws that come with a decentralized cryptographic currency.
And of course I have personal interest in this, we all do.
That's the point of it being a Peer to Peer currency, everyone has shared stake. That's what I think makes Bitcoin a fair and solid investment, and things will only get safer and better. Besides our developer overlords are working hard with the government to legitimize Bitcoin, check this video out it's Gavin in the CIA.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fv4q4i2Ktd0Brilliant observation. We're all invested in it, we all run the backbone/overhead, and we're all responsible for its use/misuse. I am optimistic too
Even the CIA couldn't get the 50%+ majority needed for a doublespend attack, and we've barely started...