The second sentence of the FT piece reads:
A Financial Times analysis of two years of trading data of Hanergy Thin Film stock — more than 800,000 individual trades on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange...On the face of it this would appear to be a first rate example of Big Data in the service of journalism.
However...
From ReCharge:
Hanergy: stock manipulation claims are mere 'innuendo'
Here is the company's press release via the Hong Kong Stock Exchange:Updated: Thursday, March 26 2015The Financial Times — which reported earlier this year that most of HTF's revenue gains in recent years have come from sales of solar components to its parent — reported this week that over the past two years, HTF’s Hong Kong-listed shares have consistently spiked in value during the last 30 minutes of each daily trading session.
The newspaper has argued that such trading activity is probably not a random occurrence, and has dismissed the possibility of electronic algorithms causing such late-day fluctuations.
“The company is not aware of any such alleged market misconduct activities by any person,” HTF said in a statement to the Hong Kong stock exchange.
Thus far, HTF has declined to speak to Recharge about criticism of its business model or claims that its stock price is overvalued.
The listed unit of Beijing-based Hanergy Group has soared in value to more than $35bn over the past year. Its market capitalisation is now five times higher than that of US-based First Solar, its chief global rival in the thin-film PV segment.
The company’s meteoric rise has also made Hanergy founder and chairman Li Hejun the wealthiest person in China, according to Forbes.
Li, who owns 73% of HTF’s shares, has struck back against suggestions that the company’s stock has been manipulated....MORE
This announcement is published on a voluntary basis by the board of directors (the “ Board ”) of Hanergy Thin Film Power Group Limited (the “ Company ”, together with its subsidiaries, the “ Group ”).The FT story, being the FT, actually left open the complex-chaotic system possibility of something akin to spontaneous chaotic granular mixing:*
The Board noticed that the Financial Times published a press article on 24 March 2015 in relation to the Group and Hanergy Holding Group Limited (together with its affiliates, “ Hanergy Group ”) containing statements trying to draw an innuendo that the controlling shareholder and the chairman of the Company, Mr. Li Hejun (“ Mr. Li ”), was/is engaging in market misconduct activities and was/is manipulating share trading and the share price of the shares of the Company....MORE (1 page PDF)
....The FT examined 140m individual trades from top listed companies in Hong Kong to explore the soaring share price of what until last year was a little known small-cap solar company.* "There are several types of instabilities in fluid mechanics that lead to spontaneous chaotic mixing and intricate patterns. Classical examples include the Kelvin–Helmholtz instability1, 2 in shear layers, the instability of Taylor–Couette flow between rotating cylinders3, 4 and the Rayleigh-Bénard instability in thermal convection5. More recently, a variety of two- and three-dimensional chaotic mixing phenomena have been observed in other geometries6, 7, 8, 9...."
Nothing within the data explains why the HTF surge happens. But analysts, who examined the FT findings, as well as the raw data, laid out three possible scenarios: market manipulation by an unknown trader, an algorithmic trading program is at play, or it occurs randomly....
-Nature, Nature 397, 675-678 (25 February 1999)