I remember on a CC a while back people were concerned about the price being so low and falling, and were asking how we could get the price up. MG commented and said (since there was no institutional investment) the larger shareholders would have to step in and one would take up to xxx and then when exhausted, the next would have to do the same and (paraphrasing) "step it up like that." It looks like that now.
It would be so much easier to speculate if we new that institutional investors were taking positions, but I doubt that is the case. MG said a while back that PM was the only institutional investor through 2015, regardless of what NASDAQ reports (most likely seeing Vanguard in the NASDAQ list is retail instructing Vanguard to buy NAVB).
So I assume this is retail buying. As such, anything goes. Institutional accumulation follows some pretty strict rules and that's why, at least some of the time, technicals work. Retail, not so much.
A nice VC or Partnership would "step it up" that's for sure.