NorthWest Biotherapeutics Inc (NWBO)

[TC_Trader]

One manipulation tactic is this:

Say I wanted to sell a stock and it was at $10. Maybe it is NWBO back in the day where the float was low and the price would move pretty quickly. I have a lot I want to unload(or naked short). Well, I want it at a bit higher than $10. I put my sell order at $10.25 in a dark pool, 100k shares...nobody knows I am selling that large quantity now, being in the dark. At the same time (the stock is at $10, and the spread is $9.96/10.03) I throw a very large order out to the public, put it on level 2 for everyone to see. "Hey everybody, the average daily volume is 70k shares, here I am trying to buy 80k and my bid is $9.80!" Everybody sees it and says wow some dude wants to buy a ton of shares let's pull our ask price of $10.03 up he must want the shares badly showing that much size. Or maybe I call my liquidity provider and tell him I am looking to buy a ton of NWBO call around and see if anyone has any to sell. He does his thing and checks his BLOOMBERG for the large holders and starts calling them, people start talking and soon the ask goes up and the bid starts chasing it. The spread works its way to my dark order and I just can start unloading 25 cents higher by pretending like I want to buy a very large order below the spread when I had no intention of doing so, and I cancel it.