AW1 Technical Analysis, page-1976

I think what happened was a combination of:

Announcement was halted for which was a bit of a mistake since even though it's exciting for the DSO, people assumed it was the deep stuff and psychologically this can create negative emotions.

Just after announcement we had an extreme amount of FUD being posted, including outright lies and omissions. It appears like a number of retail investors must have fallen for it because top holders were accumulating and then shortly after this selective shorting must have been used.

We can't see the exact time the shorts were used but it was on the day of the announcement. Not the biggest % of shares shorted, but enough to trigger stop losses.

https://www.shortman.com.au/stock?q=aw1

Traders would have no doubt noticed the TA telling them they can buy in lower, then dumped their shares, triggering more stop losses, reinforcing the fear in the investors who have not done their research and just creating a feedback loop.

Eventually it stopped because people bought the dip for whatever their personal reasons are. I can only assume it falls into one of these camps:

They saw all this taking place and saw opportunity to get more
They are a trader and wanted cheap entry
They sold their shares realizing what was happening and wanted to re-enter with more shares even though they're fundamentally long
They realized they fell for the FUD and bought back in