Same thing has happened to me a couple of years ago using CFD's. Horrible feeling, feels like someone has stolen your stock.
I do hear from guys who trade, that this is/was common practice in the forex market but especially trading currencies using CFD platforms.
Would be as easy as waiting for GDN/GDNO buy depth to thin out a bit, crash the price on both with simultaneous market sells, then swoop in to buy back 5, 10, 15 or even 20% cheaper. This is one possible scenario for what happened there on friday. Not likely but human parasites do exist.
Someone who may have known about any conditional orders may have tried this, possibly even the CFD brokers if GDN is tradeable as CFD's, these guys will likely be able to see the stop loss orders in their system.
I still think there is a possibility that it was that story about fake trips and the fantasy bit change that landed the punch on friday, but that's only my opinion. And if it was, then it is just another market dynamic that we have to be ready for when trading something like this stock.
GDN Price at posting:
19.0¢ Sentiment: None Disclosure: Held
