"Painting the tape/screen" (from WSJ)

[Bapopik at AOL.COM]

     This is from the WALL STREET JOURNAL, "Heard on the Street," 11 June
1999, pg. C1, col. 3:

_Has a '20s Trick Donned Millennium Clothes?_
By Susan Pulliam

_"The tape doesn't lie" was the sucker's folk wisdom; but, in fact, the tape
could be made to lie._
--"Once in Golconda: A True Drama of Wall Street, 1920-1938," a 1969 history
of the era by John Brooks

     In the wild stock market of the Roaring '20s, one of Wall Street's games
was called "painting the tape."  Savvy investors secretly formed pools to buy
and sell shares in unison.  By creating an illusion of hectic activity on the
ticker tape, they lured in unwitting small investors and then pocketed big
profits by dumping the shares when prices were artificially high.
     In the electronic age of the 1990s, the name has changed, to "painting
the screen," but the game is pretty much the same.
(...)