There's a possibility that the recent price movement was a deliberate attempt to trigger stop-loss orders, and it seems to have been effective.
The reason I say this is because those in urgent need of funds typically sell on Wednesdays because most brokers don't provide immediate cash after selling securities.
Also, by Friday morning before the Australian market opened, it was clear that Google had surged 14% and Microsoft was also up after their earnings reports. These are strong indicators that a negative close for the US market on Friday was highly unlikely.
Only time will tell if those who used stop-loss orders ultimately benefited or lost something valuable.
As we also can see now that the US market did indeed close on a very positive note on Friday.
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