Nite has nothing to do with it, nor does any other MM.
Each MM has a spread. If you do a sell order within their bid, they HAVE to buy them. If you do a buy order within their offer, they HAVE to sell them to you. THAT IS IT.
The money made by MM's is the difference between what they buy them for (the bid) and what they sell them for (the offer).
It makes no difference at all whether the share price is increasing or decreasing. They get their spread on both ends. They aren't traders, and don't give a whit what the share price is doing. The ONLY thing an MM doesn't care for is when no one is buying or selling - then THEY must buy/sell AMONG THEMSELVES. That is why they are called 'market makers'...they keep the market from going stagnant. They literally 'make a market' in companies that are not otherwise trading.
All these walls everyone talks about? Those are shareholders. They can put out a sell order for, say, 50M shares at a limit, and the share price will NOT exceed that point until/unless that order is filled. Yes, your friendly shareholders that have hundreds of millions of shares bought in trips control the price. Hell, I can do it in companies in which I have over 100M trips.
When you see the share price dropping, it is because some idiot is selling at market. At market tells the MM that they will accept anything for their shares. Immediately, the spread is adjusted down and the price starts dropping because the seller is getting less and less money in each tranch.
So, yes, there is manipulation, but it's not by MM's who don't care what a company's share price is. It is shareholders that are controlling the price by their large buy/sell orders. If MM's read this message board, they would crack up - everyone blames everything but the one thing that is happening - whales doing their thing.
