Pushing a stock aggressively up during the relatively illiquid last minutes/seconds of the premarket in order to sell as part of the opening auction for instance for a stock that has reported earnings and where the auction volume can absorb the liquidity with a much smaller impact? I don't know whether that is what happened to HLIT this morning. But the violent price increase during the last seconds of the premarket trading seems strange.
Where a stonk closes pre-market doesn't necessarily mean it will open there or there about. Price goes to open posted orders. Anyway it looks like it ran up pre-market, then gapped higher on RTH open. Nothing unusual that I see.
%% NOT sure I would call a $10 stock going up \or down LOL 10% + real strange . But small caps , tech sector ,even more moves like that , likely. Joshua Lukeman did note a 1% move in a $100 stock is more common than 10% move on $10 stock. [risk control context, LOL]
HLIT is easy to borrow so the shorts probably piled in as soon as they could. A lot of traders cant or wont trade in the pre-market but as soon as that opening bell rings it's Katy bar the Door. Or could be just market maker shenanigans.
Where I come from, that's actually called an edge. If you have the means to move the market at will, why not?
It’s very legal! BB, Amex Specialists, Nasdaq MMs and NYSE Specialists gap up/down stocks up as you say. Just my experience watching for decades. Knowing this now, how will you use it to your advantage? There’s a reason why.
How much $$$ did you lose? Most likely, you pressed the BUY and SELL button in the wrong sequence. If you changed your pressing sequence, you would have made tons of $$$$. Always trade with the trend and with momentum direction. and trade during Opening hours. Don't trade when the trend is not well-defined. Don't trade penny stocks.
My short foray into trading individual Stocks came to an end one fateful low volume Day when I noticed all sorts of behavior which seemed Market manipulation. Low volume means danger. Tom Williams made a career out of it, either engaged in it or writing about it.
You have to understand how the pre-market matching works. You need to know what happens * -15 minutes - 3 minutes - 60 seconds before opening. * Exchange dependent Some traders specialized in it. If that is not your intention, you should focus on RTH.