Good post! Your theory makes sense and somewhat explains why buy orders are delayed when placed by retail. My last buy order took about 30 minutes to fill, but it DID get filled. Of course the other explanation would be that diluter MMs are routing their shares through other wholesale/retail MMs, but that wouldn't explain why retail shares from etrade have priority over over blocks from VNDM and other dilution MMs.
So I decided to test the manipulation theory myself. I placed a sell order for 10 million shares a couple days ago and even though there was already over 150 million on the ask, 3 million of my shares sold ahead of all those so called "Dilution" shares. Why would MM's route around the dilution shares and let retail get out first? Makes no sense! I canceled my order when I saw this and decided to try and buy back the shares, plus another 10 million. So the next day I placed a buy order for 13 million shares, which didn't execute for about 30 minutes.
I'm pretty open and honest about my trades, so if anyone needs me to send screenshots showing the buy and sell transactions, just let me know.
