But remember, in the American markets a market maker can “fulfill” buy orders even before they locate shares. We know that collateral is passed around willy-nilly between brokers and hedge funds to maintain margin requirements (margin requirements are based solely off of the margin position itself so if a stock has no circulating shares then margin requirements will not change until price does), cryptocurrencies “backed by securities” are apparently a thing now, and conflicts of interest such as a hedge fund and its mother company, a market maker, are allowed to trade shares between each other with buy orders directed to itself as a destination and sell orders sent to the open market to affect the supply side of the equation. Not to mention market makers and their dark pools are completely unchecked in how they match orders. They could be using an algorithm that looks at current price and matches bids with asks to swing the price any direction they want.