honestabe, you must be careful with the word 'manipulating'.
I would divide the problem in TWO. Some of the stranger things we see/saw such as the ZERO spread and the unexplained strong channel containment are for sure machines. That endless stream of 100 shares also (you do understand that there is not someone sitting and placing an order of 100 shares hundred times a day). For for those phenomena I would think direction algo-boxes and then I would not assume this is specifically directed at PPHM. In that case probably some analytic program that runs contiguously will have detected some triggering conditions that qualifies PPHM as a stock on which a well specific algo can run.
In case of heavy volume and sudden market changes those algo-boxes are usually pulled out because the PPS is not evolving according detection any more.
The Begin of day (opening) and end of day (close) large volume that is not an anomaly. At the beginning of day all broker order that where places internationally and outside market hours are traded and on some days that can be a large volume. Many such orders are NEVER processed in Ph or AH.
At the end of the day the volume peek are normal too. Many traders do NOT want to carry overnight positions and hence close at all cost, if needed immediately in after-hours too. The idea is that you never know if, starting 5 min after market close and before the next open, your are going to catch a PR that goes against any overnight position. That can HARM! Also MM close there positions at close.
What I find, and I could be wrong, strange are two things that happen during the trading sessions. For starter yes that slow buying and sudden big block drop. Slow buying doesn't bring the PPS up and sudden drops does bring it down. I called that Faraday Law of Electromagnetism in trading (RATE OF CHANGE) before. Who does this? No idea but to me this looks like part of keeping the lid on. I think we can all name dozens of parties that might be interested to keep the PPS of PPHM low. Cripples ATM, creates unsatisfaction that may create goodwill to lure retailers in voting/accepting poor acquisition offers because they think PPHM will never go anywhere, etc, etc, etc.
Then there is that strange observation that EACH TIME PPHM has a quarterly, annual or important event and actually even dog & pony shows the price is pulled down before and during the event. Even yesterday, SK spoke and the PPS touched 1.13$. This is SO systematic that there I suspect a kind of 'anti-BoD' manoeuvre. It must be something like that because any pro would know it has no effect and restores and that there is no point in doing that. But again, what name can we glue on it? No idea.
So I figure categorizing is the best we can, at least I can do. I have always suspected there to be an eye on this board that IS INVOLVED in one of the above described mechanisms. Probably via lurking or so.
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