Yes, so with one you are guaranteed a fill (albeit a horrible one is possible) and with the other you are not guaranteed a fill but if you do get one it will be what you wanted.
I like to call it the "2:30 thrust" or 3:30 if u live on the East Coast...Seriously, markets make a closing thrust in the futures past several weeks at 2:30 nowadays as opposed to 2 PM in the past...
Again I say: "What the %#*& ?!" This time because after the dust settled I find out that ORCL's CEO Ellison said that the company would meet expectations when the company had previously forecast earnings of 13 to 14 cents vs. the consensus of 12 cents. So where is the logic in that? He basically lowered expectations by backing out of previous upbeat predictions of beating the numbers! Now is that bullish, bearish or simply a sign that people are so short term these days that they just can't remember more than 2 days' worth of history?
I doesn't seem like herd(news) mentality could cause it. To me it looks deliberate and planned, maybe coordinated and timed, and involved a lot of $$$. I wonder who was buying? It would be interesting to find out. Was it the market at large or just 3 or 4 huge buyers, a consortium. "We're each going to buy 10 million shares in two minutes starting at 15:20:00", or a single huge buyer. Don't know what the purpose would be though. A shake-out? Eliminate the competition? A lot of large gaps in the first half of May too. Very painful if you didn't know they were going to happen in advance.
If anyone here believes it was that pompous Ellison that caused that spike I got a bridge for ya. Game is to make 'em pay. The boys know where the weak hands are and gun for them. Simple as that.