For bullet points, I've successfully used them before. It had something to do with spaces.

Asterisk with no spaces: *bullet one

Asterisk after a space: *bullet two

Asterisk before a space: * bullet three

Asterisk with spaces before and after: * bullet four

ETA: well, none of those got it, I'll check my previous comments...

Asterisk with no spaces after a blank line:

*bullet five.

Asterisk after a blank line then a space:

*bullet six

Asterisk before a space and after a blank line:

• bullet seven

Asterisk after a blank line and a space, and followed by a space:

• bullet eight

Looks like you need a blank line before the asterisk, and a space after. A space before the asterisk makes no difference either way, and is invisible in the result.

ETA: you don't need blank lines between the items in a bullet list.

• line one
• line two

If you put them in, it looks like this:

• line one

• line two