Yesterday was probably just a Japanese trader who wanted to take advantage of cheap puts

Buy cheap puts. Spread FUD that something unexpected was going to happen at 2 am Japanese time.

This caused market participants who didn’t know what was going on to panic, erasing all the day’s gains. Trader profits from their leak. Real news comes out, stocks back to yesterday’s highs and more. Non-event.

It’s not the first time Japanese try to manipulate markets. Masayoshi Son’s SoftBank tried to force the market upwards back in 2020 by buying a ton of calls on meme stocks. https://www.cnbc.com/2020/09/04/softbank-reportedly-the-nasdaq-whale-that-bought-billions-in-options.html