Now that Shanghai Disneyland has been given the go-ahead, many will be asking the question whether others will make as much money from the $3.6 billion project as has already been made by market speculators.

Few potential projects could have been so subject to frenzied market activity as the prospect of Mickey Mouse and his friends arriving on Chinese mainland soil.

Any latest intelligence on whether the Chinese government was or was not going to give the theme park its approval could be guaranteed to unleash furious market activity.

Stocks that could benefit from the project experienced often unusual movements in their share prices, with many investors undoubtedly profiting as a result.

Many believe some of the snippets of news that often seemed subtly placed in the media had all the authenticity of a Disney fairy tale.

But whether the market was just vulnerable to rumors, or people or groups of people were deliberately manipulating the market on a huge organized scale, might never be known.

Certainly, some people got very rich from all the millions of yuan staked on mysterious and often inexplicable share movements.

Tu Jun, an analyst with Shanghai Securities, said the proposed Disney park was a dream come true for speculators.

The combination of a world-famous brand with only vague details about the actual project provided a perfect vehicle around which to create rumors and counter-rumors in order to make lots of money, he said.

"This type of speculation is usually very sensitive to related news reports and events. It is not so much the reality, but the expectation that spurs market reaction," Tu said.

Tu said there have been other examples around the world, although few to match this scale.

"The phenomenon is quite common in the markets. We call it thematic investment or speculation," he said.