Reminds me of something I read in "Reminiscences of a Stock Operator". The big players, when they want to buy, start by selling to see if the supply will be taken up. Once they determine that, they flip and start buying.

I have been reading "Reminiscences of a Stock Operator" by Jesse Livermore, there he explains how he managed to 'manipulate' the stock price up (i.e buy back a small quantity of stocks to raise the price and stir up the interest of speculators) before unloading a huge pool of shares. He calls this as 'distributing' the stocks to public and the 'manipulation' as 'increasing the marketablity' of the stock.