But this has been going on for a while. Institutions seek out to trade large blocks among themselves rather than risking order fragmentation and daytraders running momo against their order. Also the specialist screwing them. Institutional traders used to pretty much call other brokers & institutions to trade blocks and minimize market impact. BTW, Millenium ATS made quite a few daytraders a lot of easy money. So having institutions going toward ATS is not a bad thing if you can think outside the box. It's when they get polluted by more daytraders & bots is when the problems start.
Wash and rinse is the bitch. That's what they do. They create volatility in a position to a degree that it's untenable for anyone who uses stops of any kind to establish a long term position. By they time they start accumulating for good (they've identified these equities months, maybe even many, many months ahead of times, and have been ramping and plunging it repeatedly), pikers like me already view the equity with disdain as being far too volatile to ever touch again. I know this is what I've experienced many times.