This is the kind of thing I'm talking about. Look at this guy:
http://www.picamatic.com/show/2010/04/15/09/33/10190555_bigthumb.jpgThe only reason the sell price is as low as it is right now is because people have been doing this all day. He put his big, ugly order in at .066 instead of .07 or so because there's another order in his way. See that order right below his, the one for a whopping .0066 BTC? I guess he thinks that little order is gonna stop him from selling at .07. At the amount he's selling, the difference between .066 and .07 is about 150 bucks. And if he didn't put the whole damn thing down in the same place, he could get a lot more than that, and in the same amount of time, perhaps even less.
What do you think most people are gonna do when they see his order, there? Do you think they're gonna buy some of it? Why would they? They know damn good and well that they won't be able to sell any of it until all of his coins are gone. The only thing anyone can do, if they want to enter the market at this point, with less than 4 BTC, is to buy lower, which means they need to put a buy order in, which is exactly what most people will do is what most people will do because they want to trade, not buy his shit coin at whatever price he happens to think he has to have it at.
So, what do you think happens next? Trading resumes at a lower price. Here's the situation a few minutes later:
http://www.picamatic.com/show/2010/04/15/09/54/10190659_bigthumb.jpg Notice that his entire order is still sitting there and trading has not stopped. It hasn't even slowed down, but simply continued at a lower price.
http://www.picamatic.com/show/2010/04/15/10/00/10190660_bigthumb.jpgHad he bothered to look at the situation before he posted his huge, ugly order like a clumsy, dumb fucking idiot, he would have seen that people were buying at the higher price before he blocked any further price increase with that stupid order.
http://www.picamatic.com/show/2010/04/15/09/33/10190556_bigthumb.jpg11 of the previous idiot's coins had just sold at .073..., but, of course, as you would expect, most of the trading was taking place at prices below that of the big dumb, chunky sell order.
Here's the LAW:
If you post a huge sell order at the current price, the price
WILL drop to less than that of your huge order.