I was a little shocked a few minutes after reset this morning when I saw many low-priced stocks or recently IPO'd stocks that I was holding short suddenly go up in price. I know this see-saw effect of prices flipping back and forth day to day is normal for HSX, but the number of stocks affected made it a little weird.
When I look at the intra-day trading graphs for certain stocks at theun4gven.com I see some strange things. For example, GENUS. At exactly 11pm, the price was $2.89. The price rose rapidly over the next hour and at 12pm the price was $4.65, a gain of $1.76 in one hour. There was no apparent reason for a large number of traders to suddenly buy (or cover shorts). My port has over 1,700 securities, and I wouldn't notice the movement, so I wonder why so many others like me would notice it and start buying (or short covering) in such a frenzy that it gains $1.76 in 60 minutes.
Like I said, there were many other stocks with similar movements, starting at exactly 11pm and gaining a dollar or two in an hour. With no news or other reason to trade, why was there such a buying frenzy? Or was there?
I know that people use multiple accounts to make stocks move a reset and gain from the sheep trading of others. When I see a number of stocks at exactly 12:05pm, its usually the same: 200,000 shares each. Exactly 200,000 shares traded for many of them. As in 2 accounts of a trader each buying 100,000 shares. Knowing that even during daytime hours trades take 30 seconds or so to complete, and take considerably longer at reset, its likely that someone with 2 accounts bought (or covered) the stock at reset to move the price.
But last night's trading was strange because the price started rapidly going up at exactly 11pm. I don't know how many trades are required to move a dollar or two in an hour, but it must be a large number. Was there coordinated trading between people with multiple accounts? Did trades occur because of some automated process? Or am I just not a good enough trader to notice a single $2.00 stock quickly going up in price in a port with 1,700 stocks?