Yikes! Scary stuff there, Beav.

I paraphrase, Say it ain't so, Beav, say it ain't so!

Speaking of 'manipulation, that reminds me of something else, possibly obliquely related to that, which most here have probably observed often just the same as i have:

Every morning befor the market opens to start trading, i see a lot of wildly higher or lower priced matching bids & asks which disappear again well befor the start of trade. Eg, i may see a SP looking like it's ready on both sides - bids & asks - to trade a couple of dollars higher or lower than the previous day's closing price. But almost always the large moves in SP that they would have meant have subsided into something fairly minor by the open. I wonder what the possibilities are that would make sense of someone placing these strange open orders only close them again befor they could possibly be acted on.

I realize that there are many different possibilities behind these strange open orders, but one possible explanation for them that got me extra curious lately is this:

What if they are placed so as to just APPEAR there as clear SIGNALS TO OTHERS as to what is going to happen later on (without actually trading there at that time) - info revealed as to where prices WILL be going later in the day all WITHOUT THERE BEING ANY EVIDENCE leftover from a fone message or anything in writing or any audio recording left behind which could be used as evidence about any kind of collusion or insider trading , etc, on the part of the "bidder" (or the 'asker', likewise). If someone has been carefully tracking this kind of activity long enough, they might have observed HOW OFTEN whether these mysterioso SP's end up reaching (or falling to) the levels indicated by the pre-open order levels.