The Games MMs Play
When an industry player has a large volume of shares he/she wants to dump into the market, they don’t do it sitting at their desktop hitting the sell button. They hire a professional, a Market Maker Broker Dealer. The U.S. Department of Justice has investigated numerous cases of manipulation, one of which is called a “Move on Request”. Basically it involves two MMs working in concert, with one asking another to move the bid/ask up or down on a particular stock depending on which way he needs the price to move. It’s a "quid pro quo" system where MMs scratch each other’s backs, because the MM making the request will probably be asked later to help out another MM when he has a stock he needs manipulated. Push it up when long, take it down when short...not something an individual trader has the power to do.