Plunge Protection Team (PPT)

The Plunge Protection Team (PPT) is the colloquial name for the (President's) Working Group on Financial Markets; a group created by executive order by US President Ronald Reagan on 18 March 1988.

The name "Plunge Protection Team" appeared as a headline for an article in The Washington Post on 23 February 23 1997, and quickly caught on and has been used more since then to refer to this group in the press than its real name.

Conspiracy theorists claim that the PPT is being used to manipulate and prop-up the US stock markets. Futures traders who are short the equity index futures and end up having to close out their positions at a loss when the market does not fall or rises instead will frequently claim that the market "should have" fallen that the reason that it did not was because the PPT stepped in and "bought the market" and artificially manipulated it.