All sorts of silly buggers get played, it's not unique to TNT, it happens on many companies and is very common. If you watch the markets a lot, you'll see all sorts of tricks. A couple of the most common ones are stacking the depth (and if you watch the action unfold you'll often see that depth being pulled just before it gets hit, confirming they never wanted their orders to go through, they are just shaking the tree), and another trick is putting through tiny sell orders (just one or a very small number of shares) immediately after buys, to make the last price appear lower without selling a meaningful amount. Sometimes you'll see a lot of buying, with every buy immediately followed by a tiny sell. Or, less often, tricks like this are used in reverse.
It's well known to every trader who has been around for any amount of time.
These strategies are illegal and often unethical, so they don't exactly advertise that they're doing it and openly discuss it, but it's often completely blatant and very difficult to prove, so it doesn't get policed.
When you consider the massive financial benefit to be had by large corporations wanting to accumulate stock, it's obvious that they're going to save those huge amounts of money if they can, it's a no brainer.
TNT Price at posting:
29.5¢ Sentiment: Buy Disclosure: Held
