If the market can be moved that heavily with seemingly not a whole lot of effort, what's to stop a person or group of people with a big enough bankroll from putting up bogus bids/asks and slowly stepping the market price up to a certain point, then cashing out? Is this what is referred to as a "pump and dump"?
Thank you all for humoring me.
The cashing out would be the hard part - you can make the market price move up just by spending cash. But you can't make people put up bids - and there's usually very few bids up. And as you're seeing right now, as soon as someone starts selling, the buyers all stop putting up bids.
And yes - that would be a pump and dump attempt.
Why is the market so illiquid? in other words, why do buyers not appear even when shares are being offered at discounted prices? Isn't that bearish for S.DICE overall, if no one will allow the price to rise by buying into rallies?
If the seller put his shares up in an Ask wall at .005 then I expect they wouldn't last too long (though this time of night they may as probably not too many around). But consider it from the perspective of a buyer who wouldn't mind buying at .005 but hasn't any great need too. If they put up a bid at .005 then there's a few bad (by which I mean sub-optimal) things that happen:
1) They get outbid - and the price rises meaning they miss the chance to buy at .005 at all.
2) Seller slams his shares up in a sell wall BELOW .005 and they buy at .005 when everyone gets theirs cheaper.
The seller's shown he isn't willing to wait to sell at a higher price so there's no reason for buyers to be impatient. Let him put his shares up, underbid with small asks to see if he can be persuaded to go lower and only buy if/when it looks like his wall is going to get cleaned out. The goal isn't to buy shares, it's to buy them as cheaply as possible. If he'll fill a bid at .005 then why not wait and see if he'll go even lower? If he won't fill a bid at .005 then you gain nothing by putting up a bid - as it won't get filled anyway.
Not all securities work like this - S.DICE is especially good for panicky sellers and lower liquidity.
