You've embraced the notion that every should act like adults and be rational. But markets can be irrational for a loooooooong time-- thus the requirement for a resolution.
See you, based on the behavioral finance field, the Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman wrote in his book Thinking Fast and Slow, the pain of losing money is (-$100), called loss aversion, is always greater than is the joy that the winner has from gaining money (+$100).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_aversionTherefore this creates a asymmetric scenario. The losers will always have greater leverage than the winners, because they will do everything they can to avoid that loss because it hurts so much more. Think of it like the kid who plays board games with the adults and whines at the very end when he loses.
For the child, it hurts so much more. The adults don't understand how much it hurts. But it pains the kid to the core. The kid is playing another game than the adults. He's playing the I have more information game (regardless of the facts of the game) because only he knows who long he can stall the game. It could be for 5 minutes or maybe he didnt have his breakfast and is unusually more irritated and is planning to stall for the whole day. He has greater power to manipulate the adults. The adults have no idea how to value that because this is the neighbors child and they don't have any history of his behavior.
The adults don't want to put up with the child because they don't have the time to, and the reward of the game doesn't justify for them the value of making the child lose. So they let him win. But in the end the game is never played again because the adults have other opportunity costs and wouldn't want to bargain with this game in the future because its already set a precedent and somebody else might turn like the kid (maybe another adult). Why not? The precedent has already been set before.
I'll end my example with a question. What if liars come in and buy cheaply into a market with the expectation of stalling longer than the honest bettor? What if the unfairness of stalling has turned away all honest people?