In my opinion the use of capping and bots upsets the normal...

In my opinion the use of capping and bots upsets the normal balance of supply and demand.

If you have a good announcement, for example the other day when MEO secured a rig, many people would regard this as optimistic for the company and may see it as an enhancement in the value (although not realized straight away but perhaps to be built into the price immediately). Those who want to buy the stock should increase (like we saw) however they still want to still buy it as cheaply as possible. Those selling may regard the announcement as positive as well and want to sell at an increased value because they also see that the company as "worth more" so there is a friction between buyers trying to get the stock as cheaply as possible and the sellers wanting to get the price as high as possible. On a good announcement you would expect more buyers (a greater demand) so this friction should favour those selling and hence we should see an increase in value of the company (after all on good news that's what makes sense right?)

We saw this immediately after the announcement when buyers rushed in and tried to get stock on the morning of the announcement. However, bots and cappers came in and upset this balance. How do they do this? Well firstly they don't care if they lose money. The amount of money they have compared to individuals is so large that losing a bit now to buy up large later doesn't matter to them just as long as you keep the price down for as long as possible. So on good news instead of getting the best value as possible they try and get the worst value as possible hence the friction of supply and demand now has an element that is working in favor of the supply. Usually on good announcements supply should be smaller, with cappers it seems that it is still smaller because of the small parcels they use but in reality it is not because of the huge resources they have. The lack of supply is being soaked up in small packages at the interface of the sell/buy depth by a company that doesn't mind losing money in small amounts. They take out buyers as soon as they can and once a bid/ask level is taken out then individuals who want the stock cheaply will also adjust their prices lower. So even although there is a greater demand you see the price coming down. The bots initially don't win because of the substantial increase in demand but once the initial frenzy is over it is easy for them to drip feed the buyers and keep the price lower. Again yesterday there was an increased demand but yet the price came down. Is this manipulation of supply demand? Draw you own conclusions.