I always like throwing out my 'gut feelings' every so often on where the price is going and why. THIS IS A SPECULATION post!
So.... here we go.... They ran the price up to get people feeling one way or the other to drop it today. They are searching for buys now at $14 before they have to drop it into the $11s. Why? Well, we've already speculated that they can't go below $10 due to the assets/liabilities ($1.3B in cash).
So, they have the problem of dropping it lower means faster APE buying and too high means they are paying huge amounts in borrow fees/interest. I believe they are searching for buys right now by moving the price within $1 range versus going down to $10-$11 (which I will greedily suck up)
Then what happens? The qtr closes. No matter how tight a lid a company has... rumors get out. We'll see movement before the earnings date. I believe we'll see the next buy from insiders as soon as the insider buyer moratorium for the qtr is lifted.
I think you might be right, though it is impossible to know for sure.
Like how the price started pumping a few days prior to December 6 earnings because those earnings were going to be decent and cause a positive reaction. So they get ahead of the positive reaction by preemptively pumping it beforehand for the purpose of preventing or slowing any momentum. This is what i suspect happened and may happen again in March of this year prior to earnings date.