Rastus, don't wanna answer for mitta, but I'm with Interactive...

Rastus, don't wanna answer for mitta, but I'm with Interactive Brokers and they charge minimum of $6 brokerage or 0.8%. Now, professional traders i.e. mitta, can get the minimum charge waived if they're trading enough. So 0.8% of 59c means ~0.47c for a 1 share trade. I highly doubt mitta ever buys or sells 1 share, but I think the purpose of these trades is to probe. Most trading platforms have very unsophisticated stop loss mechanisms i.e. If price reaches X, buy or sell, or if price hits X a certain number of times, buy or sell, or if volume traded at price > (specified volume), buy or sell. So these bot trades are just probing to see how much fear or exuberance are in the market for a particular stock. Brave New World. Obviously, these bots have glitches e.g. May 2010 flash crash, but really all they're doing is trying to gauge supply and demand (fear and exuberance). However, their masters are in control of when to turn them on or off based on inside info, but last few days I think were just the bots doing their thing, sniffing around for scaredy cats, rorkes etc. Doubt much will happen til the fear or exuberance tap is turned on.