I’m wondering if someone was trying to test the market makers to see if those share blocks on the ask were real or if they’re just spoon feeding the market with computer controlled blocks. While scalp day trading with large share blocks, I have personally wiped out asks causing an increase in price. The bid then follows the ask up to the next price point. You can then put a sell order in above the bid and make a few hundred dollars from the new spread. This can be done over and over again to slowly walk a price up. Sometimes I would try wiping out the ask, the order would fill and then magically the number of shares on the ask would remain the same, clearly a computer was manipulating the ask. In this morning’s quick jump, my guess is some of the MMs fell asleep at the wheel and didn’t have their orders ready when the market opened, the computers quickly caught it and we are back to status quo.
