"Pump and dump" operation involving McClatchy's stock ??

Yesterday I noticed MNI's share price rose dramatically during morning trading, then began falling again once the price hit 90 cents a share. I wondered if that was evidence that investors believed MNI's ceiling was 90 cents. Well, we can't say that because it turns out there weren't enough shares involved to draw that conclusion. However, there is speculation that something shady might have been going on. Via comments:

After looking at the historical data I believe what you have here is the classical, "Pump and Dump" operation going on at open.

What happens is a boiler room group of traders will start a web site or chat room claiming to have the ticket to making huge profits on the markets. They will then sell subscriptions for day trading advice and each morning select picks for their subscribers (read as suckers)

What they don't tell them is that they bought a bunch of shares either the day before or that morning. They then tip their pigeons (would be daytraders)that there is a "hot rumor" and provide a link to some PR release (that they probably wrote) and say, "Buy, buy, buy! If you suck 5 or 10 people into the scam and have 5 or 10 people pumping it, it is not hard to start a miniature herd reaction driving the price up. When everyone reports in the chat that they are in, the would be tipsters sell the lot that they had previous to the buy recommendation.

If you will notice, the price this morning was up on a series of buys amounting to approximately 25,000 shares early. As soon as the price hit .90, the price dropped immediately at the hands of over 22k shares.

Pretty slick actually. Illegal but there are ways to skirt the law. Besides, the SEC has a really full plate right now, so they could care less about some greedy people thinking they are about to leave someone else holding the bag, when in reality, it is them that are the victim. Kind of sad and funny at the same time. Most day traders are very hard working individuals and this gives them a bad rep.

It's just speculation. But it's easy to see how a company's stock price can be manipulated over the short term.
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