Two weeks ago IWM did half it's day's trading in the last minute. Last year's "average daily trade" involved about 29 million shares. This week several days saw over 200 million IWM shares traded.
This share, BTW, is one of several that track the Russell 2000 index. It's fairly comparable to the federal employee's S-fund.
I became aware about a year ago that hedge funds were playing games with IWM (among others) when the normal levels of volatility doubled.
My investment isn't big enough to do anything but follow these guys but the trick seems to be to play a variation on Parando's Paradox.
It isn't working. That's why the big traders have to dump stocks by the carload at the end of the day.
There's been overnight recovers of more than 2% of value, but programmed trading wiped that out by 10 AM.
Discounting the big traders (presumably hedge funds) the stock has been wandering back and forth $2 on either side of $82 per share for nearly a year, which is hardly volatile.
My guess is one or two better managed and very large hedge funds are making a profit by utilizing ETIFs to suck most of the others dry.
All I know is now is not the time to sell. I am starting to be a buyer. Bought XOM at the close today.