Upon further rumination I realized I broke something of a cardinal rule of mine....that the market is far too difficult and that there is just one way to do things.

I posted that hedgies looking to spur fear, that they could push through a bunch of small lot orders via a number of different brokers to give the impression of a broad based sell off.

Well, that's just one way.

The same thing could be accomplished by shorting a large block right off the bat to push the PPS down right at the bell. Or both could be done....first big then smaller lots, or smaller lots followed by a big sell.

No easy way to know....but when the short number gets updated after the 30th....we might be able to get an indication 3 days after that. That would still leave lots of time to cover though.