There is always a stock market open somewhere in the world. Recently the exchanges have been talking about expanding the trading hours. Traders with programs like RealTick III , connected directly to services like Reuters Instinet , are trading before and after exchange hours every day. Many brokerages already offer Instinet trading service through the live broker, so it is to be expected that the exchanges and brokerages will compete with the demand for longer trading hours. As trading hours increase, we can expect the impact velocity of global trading patterns to increase.
Stock prices move rapidly on greed and fear, and tend to crash faster than they rise.
Over 28 million shares traded, with only 9.8 million shares outstanding. The Raging Bull 6 chat room had hundreds of posts that day, and by late morning people were guessing that it was insider trading. You can see what happened on December 29. With only 2.5 million shares in circulation, about that many shares changed hands. It took until the beginning of March for those who got stuck holding the overpriced shares to get shaken out.