Why would it be annoying to a long shareholder if it closes high?...particularly when the next day it traded and closed above that high.
and unless your watching L2 all day it is misleading.
It is not misleading when the ask is there for the taking. Nobody else is selling shares for less, so the market is dictating the price. It doesn't matter whether the buyer purchases 100 shares or 100,000 shares...they are buying at the highest advertised offer...absolutely nothing misleading about that. There's no market rule saying a buyer has to purchase between the bid and ask.
The market should clear normally.
Someone purchasing a block of shares at the advertised ask IS normal. What evidence is there that it is not? As I said before, if you don't like that someone is able to purchase shares at an ask that seems higher than it should be, then put up your own shares for sale below that. Obviously nobody else did, otherwise there would've been a lower ask.
It always seems to be the last transaction of the day. That's odd and always for the ASK, also odd. And I mean statically odd.
That's because you only pay attention to it when it happens. It happened a couple of days...BFD. It didn't happen today. People complained about it in March/April of 2014...and I haven't heard a peep about it since...until you made a stink about it last week. There was a time where people complained about the market makers always painting the tape lower.
People act with a purpose and if your going to pay even a minimum commission ( $7 ) on a $ 50 to $100 sale there must be a reason.
Shareholders sometimes have fun doing it on their own because it gets a reaction out of people or they think they are messing with the MMs...who could care less. Not all of these transactions are taking a commission. They could be partial fill GTC limit orders. Also, shareholders often get free trades from their brokerages for a variety of reasons - promotions, good faith, etc. So the commission is not a factor in the trade. I know of some shareholders who had 30 days of free trades who used to do it all the time just for fun. I know someone in another stock who hated the stock and just wanted out, but he kept selling at the low in small blocks just out of anger to piss off people on the boards. No evil Picasso. No evil market maker. Just a disgruntled shareholder throwing his money away. It was obvious what was going on, but it is all part of the overall market and, like I continue to say, it doesn't mean a damned thing to the long term share price. The share price eventually finds its equilibrium, so you're wasting your time letting it annoy you and grousing about it.