Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not so sure that temporarily changing the market cap of apple really would count as controlling it. It's like saying: I can jump on the field at a Yankee game and "control" 50k spectators and 50m viewers. You may influence them for about a second, but the farther you try to bring the situation from the market's desire, the quicker you'll be corrected. Sinking 1b into selling apple short would make a small, tempor…
You ignore the effect of feedback loops. You are also making the fallacy of reification (market doesn't want anything). They key part to this lesson is that valuations are essentially arbitrary (not about market manipulation - although market dynamics are an interesting subject). Take no stock in them (pun intended) - just like you should ignore the predictions of pundits. The following examples exemplify the meaning…
These are examples of arbitrageable opportunities. The wealth you can create by moving a glass of water from a lake to a desert is a real thing. Valuations aren't "meaningless" in that way unless you take the extreme nihilist position of everything being meaningless because it would change in a different situation. That's not meaninglessness, it's just context-sensitivity.
The fallacy of reification only occurs if you assign value to the existence of things (like "we should reduce regulation because the market wants it"). It's perfectly useful and common to say things like "the market wants" to mean "the market acts in a way such that were it a sentient being it would act this way because of a conscious desire" without actually holding the view that the market is a sentient being. That's just how English works (see, I did it right there).