I appreciate and applaud you for taking the time to actually go through this and put it out there.
With that though, you're going to have to keep going with the education part of this, because a few things that you put in there don't line up.
1) This is not able to be traded on margin, so why would there be a requirement to have that available? Unless you are saying that just because it is a penny stock they have to have that available.
2) I can appreciate the detailing of faith in the MMs motives while "shorting" a stock for a few seconds to get my shares to me right away. However, I don't wholly buy this. A few reasons:
a) I have placed limit's and watched them come through the transaction wire in various forms that were not 1) The price that I placed the limit at, yet I was charged that price (albeit it was just a small amount), 2) The transaction shows as a 'Sell' rather than a 'Buy' which says to me that tricky accounting takes place that allows those MMs to declare it however they like in order to...well, I'm not sure what they get from it. I have my suspicions, but that is all they are. Finally 3) I have placed Market orders that have done the same thing, and oh by the way, watched the transaction wire to see when it comes through.
b) What is it then, that has placed question marks all around Citadel, if there is not manipulation going on? They are MMs for a reason, sure! But that doesn't mean that they are operating on the up and up ~shout out to Wolf of Wall Street~.
You know just as well as I do that there are various means and ways to manipulate these things, and those very same MMs are professionals at it. It IS, after all their game. While this simpleton penny stock doesn't offer much in the way of profit from heavy shorting, it still offers a consistent and tight little $10, 20, 30, maybe even $50k pot every day, with very little if any chance of getting caught and wrist slapped.
You can't write this off to "it's low volume", because I am in a stock that has far lower volume movement per day. Heck, they're lucky if they get 10 trades in a day. If the buy order comes in, the order just sits there until someone is ready to sell. Now, you might say "that's not how it works/how it's supposed to work", there are quite a few things that are taking place in the market these days that aren't how they are supposed to work.
That volume percentage means something when I can't trust in the transparency of the agencies and entities that are supposed to be governing these things.
I can be convinced to believe other things...on this subject. But more and better transparency is required first.
