Stop losses purposely hit - RNS incoming?2 Jun 2020 20:12
I think the below summary from Myles Mcnulty's must read piece is what happened here today....
Through discussions with other market participants (fellow market makers, brokers, etc.) he understands that the recent increase in demand for shares is due to an anticipated news release from the company that the investment community overall believes will be positive. He therefore appreciates that it would be sensible to hold a greater number of shares going into this period than he would be accustomed to, so that were the news to indeed be positive, he would not be required to push the bid up so aggressively and create a spike in the process. Accordingly, during trading when a number of sells hit his order book, the market maker – having spotted that a large block of shares is available at a lower price through the hitting of a ‘stop loss’ (an instrument used by an investor to automatically sell shares once the share price hits a certain price, thereby limiting the investor’s loss) – duly drops the bid (on occasions significantly) more than would be considered necessary to balance the book. The stop loss order is executed, the investor is knocked out of his position, and the market maker now has a large supply of cheap shares that he can sell at a tidy profit to investors when the anticipated good news does arrive.