I'll concur on your theory - I've made purchases of @ 20K shares twice over the last few weeks, usually at the ask. All have been painfully slow partial fills, each on the order of maybe 500, 2000, odd numbers (like 4860, or something) but the comon thread underscoring each trade, was they were bits and pieces at a time, at the ask, and usually took somewhere @ 25-35 minutes to fill...

I have thoughts on what entitiy is soaking up the shares, but I don't know why or how the strategy plays out...but I'll leave all that all alone for now.

Regards