El Juego Psicologico
The implications of POR rejection along with other factors are such that MMs and their Lords can not be certain enough to short so brutally even if they cover some by the close.
Conclusion: they have a direct line of instruction that has a mandate of shorting at any cost (which is not relatively large for day-to-day manipulation). The cost is low to them (and overall their trading profits and commissions are net positive contributors to their bottom line) as confused/conservative longs, intermediate traders, event-exploiter looking for short term-gains etc. sell on the artificial momentum created by MMS.
They understand the market pattern and the fact that a large number of dedicated longs are fully invested and are not active participant in day-to day swing. So how do they keep intelligent (there are lots of them here) retail from making their manipulation more difficult.
They just do not leave much chances for arbitrage and reducing risk within diffrent interpretation of retailers. There is a maddening push for quickly removing those quick opportunities and I think they may have been using programmed trading to control that. other tactics invole -increasing the bid-ask spread, when situation demand selling under bid, when momentum is high not changing the bid/ask and artificial sell quantities on level II.
As the knowledgeable longs are fully invested, volume is thin given that with so many moving parts and lack of perspective the potential entrants/traders are looking for some reduction of uncertainity.
Even if they have a direct line, when things move favorably for us, they would be able to cover only a small portion of their shorts so cheaply for knowledgeable longs would be able to estimate a reasonable point to sell and wait appropriately.
I must emphasize though that the game is much bigger and psychological than profiting from shorting/trading.