[In your personal opinion is the conduct I described in the 2 examples legal or illegal?]
We may soon discover that what is legal for the big players might be illegal for the little guy.
That has been one of the major observations of this whole Gamestop thing. I think both should be legal and see nothing wrong with “little guys” getting together on social media to recognize an opportunity and taking action together on it. I may not like the multi hundred million hedge fund guys doing it but see no way to stop it. If it was not meeting over lunch, then at the tennis club, golf course, ad infinitum. Too many ways to communicate something like this while leaving little or no record.