A bit of a contrarian view here, but while Monday’s action was extreme, in the end it was just opportunistic trading and a whole lot of bandwagon action that was likely accidental but good for those who were trading. That doesn’t make it manipulation. The timeline was likely planned, for a few reasons -- a main one being when the Canadian market was closed (thereby decreasing liquidity) -- but again, that’s just trading on opportunity.

A couple of very big traders utilized the option chain while short covering, and it triggered algos, which triggered day trading scanners on a low volume market week, and so on and so on to fomo.

The shorts piling in the past two months covered, then made money selling covered call options while they covered. The volume was exponential as everyone who was looking for a runner on the quiet Christmas week jumped in. It happens across the market on different stocks every day. Nobody likely expected that massive a volume, but in low volume / market closed weeks such as Christmas, everyone is looking out for a runner, and it became the meal of the day.

As Casey noted on CEO, and which I and many didn't notice, the price bounced precisely off the 2.382 long term fibonacci retracement levels beloved by institutional traders, to the exact cent. A major trader or two likely saw that level approaching, and they moved in as a result to do some large block trading.

Once the volume spiked, a lot of existing US share holders (including many longs) realized it wasn’t going to stay up after running so hard, so sold a chunk of their shares (guessing they could buy back later cheaper). At the same time, those covered calls were being sold, and shorting took over on the spike. All that combined selling then drove the price back down.

Also noted was that one of the reasons Monday could have been chosen to cover is because by 5pm that day the short interest data had to be delivered to SEC and FINRA, and funds don't want to report they are short, so covering takes it off the table and allows them to short again between cycles, reporting zero short positions on their next report.

There's nothing to complain to the SEC about; it's just trading based on technicals and fortuitous timing. What you can wonder about it is why the US and CDN markets have different holiday dates when the two markets are so intertwined. It's clearly an unfair advantage, but any broker allows journalling of shares between markets, you just have to look into it.

Exposure to gigantic markets and traders on the Nasdaq brings many scenarios, and Monday's was one of them. In the end, it's just intraday trading that doesn't affect much long term. If you're a long and are holding anyway, it wouldn't matter, as you went to bed at one price, and a day or two later, the stock is still back around the same price. It only sucks if you missed out on the intraday trades you coulda made had you been part of the trading action.