An explanation for the down-to-cents dip on the US stock markets?

The strange dip down to cents of some shares on the US stock markets could have a simple explanation. There might have been automated systems that had been programmed to sell some shares if they went below a certain market price. If these systems have many shares, they may sell a lof of them at the same time.

Now if the buying if these shares is also automated, there may have been an area of prices that the automated selling and buying systems weren't configured for. For example, say share X is normally priced at $100. For some reason it is pushed to $80. A this point one system with a heck of a lot of shares sell, or several systems that all have roughly the same sell point, sell.

Now other automated systems snap up these cheap shares, but there are not enough of them so the price goes down a bit further, to say $75. At this price point the systems that just bought the shares sell again. Now there should be systems picking up at that price, but let's say that those (bottom feeding) systems may have been configured to trade not in one share but in a low market in general, preferring to snap up a combination of shares. So they do not buy one low share.

So basically the shares that were sold a pennies, were sold at pennies because they were deemed stable. Noone could imagine prices going so low for them, without a general market crash.

If this explanation or one similar is correct , we have encountered something counter intuitive:

That the shares went down to pennies because the companies are solid as rock.

A stop order triggers when a price goes under a specific price, and sells as a market order: It takes the best offer available at the time.

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