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Micro trades are driving me spare

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Tannin

Tannin

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The practice of dribbling out trades in tiny, uneconomic quantities to try to manipulate the market has to be addressed.

Every week we see more and more rubbish trades unquestionably designed only to manipulate or obfuscate. These trades for 1 share or 10 7c shares are clearly not ordinary individuals trading in good faith, they are there for two apparent reasons

1: to change the price artificially - if another market participant just looks at the price, not the trading history, they will be tricked into thinking that the market price has gone up or down.

2: to swamp the trading history with so many trivial entries that it becomes difficult or impossible for a human trader to see what is actually going on in a timely manner.

If you deal with thinly traded stocks, as recently as a few months ago, you wouldn't have seen a sign of this manipulative and dishonest technique. Now the cheating scum are everyywhere, even in some quite obscure minor stocks. You can't escape.

It's time the ASX and/or ASIC cracked down to restore transparency and honest trading.
 
Tannin said:
The practice of dribbling out trades in tiny, uneconomic quantities to try to manipulate the market has to be addressed.

Every week we see more and more rubbish trades unquestionably designed only to manipulate or obfuscate. These trades for 1 share or 10 7c shares are clearly not ordinary individuals trading in good faith, they are there for two apparent reasons

1: to change the price artificially - if another market participant just looks at the price, not the trading history, they will be tricked into thinking that the market price has gone up or down.

2: to swamp the trading history with so many trivial entries that it becomes difficult or impossible for a human trader to see what is actually going on in a timely manner.

If you deal with thinly traded stocks, as recently as a few months ago, you wouldn't have seen a sign of this manipulative and dishonest technique. Now the cheating scum are everyywhere, even in some quite obscure minor stocks. You can't escape.

It's time the ASX and/or ASIC cracked down to restore transparency and honest trading.
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Yes, agree. To do this i suggest we re-instate pit trading!:D
 
If you deal with thinly traded stocks, as recently as a few months ago, you wouldn't have seen a sign of this manipulative and dishonest technique. Now the cheating scum are everyywhere, even in some quite obscure minor stocks. You can't escape
Click to expand...

Tell me in your own words how you think trading small parcels at X price manipulates the stock and is dishonest?

Who do you think are doing it?
Why cant you and I do the same after all they are small parcels?

Oh Ill gve you my view after we hear some others.
T/H??
 
Tannin said:
The practice of dribbling out trades in tiny, uneconomic quantities to try to manipulate the market has to be addressed.

Every week we see more and more rubbish trades unquestionably designed only to manipulate or obfuscate. These trades for 1 share or 10 7c shares are clearly not ordinary individuals trading in good faith, they are there for two apparent reasons

1: to change the price artificially - if another market participant just looks at the price, not the trading history, they will be tricked into thinking that the market price has gone up or down.

2: to swamp the trading history with so many trivial entries that it becomes difficult or impossible for a human trader to see what is actually going on in a timely manner.

If you deal with thinly traded stocks, as recently as a few months ago, you wouldn't have seen a sign of this manipulative and dishonest technique. Now the cheating scum are everyywhere, even in some quite obscure minor stocks. You can't escape.

It's time the ASX and/or ASIC cracked down to restore transparency and honest trading.
Click to expand...

You know that's not going to happen.
Those with the most money have the most power over those who make the rules.
Bot trading is here to stay because it suits those with the most money.
I buy 'at market' where applicable, and sell always 'at market'. That's all I can do.

Keep in mind that you're playing against micro-cap fund managers and high net worth individual traders. In good times such funds/traders do extremely well, with 60%+pa returns, so they do have some way of working the system to their advantage. If you own 80% of the depth on both sides, it's easy to see how you can "see" anyone else in the queue and make them pay higher/lower prices than they might otherwise. The other thing they do is add massive volume to the buy side after and as they are buying. This is very easy to see. Something moves and all of a sudden, BAM, 10 mill new buyers out of nowhere, so far removed from the action that they will never get filled. Then when/as they stop buying, suddenly the volume disappears.

Summary - buy/sell at market. Watch the depth action, especially outside the top 3-5 lines. You can safely assume that the top 3 lines are "real" on both sides. This is where day traders sit - in the top 3 lines. Outside of that are longer term traders wanting a specific price that they have calculated as reasonable....and the manipulators.
 
They arent manipulating!
Gringotts Bank said:
You know that's not going to happen.
Those with the most money have the most power over those who make the rules.
Bot trading is here to stay because it suits those with the most money.
I buy 'at market' where applicable, and sell always 'at market'. That's all I can do.

Keep in mind that you're playing against micro-cap fund managers and high net worth individual traders. In good times such funds/traders do extremely well, with 60%+pa returns, so they do have some way of working the system to their advantage. If you own 80% of the depth on both sides, it's easy to see how you can "see" anyone else in the queue and make them pay higher/lower prices than they might otherwise. The other thing they do is add massive volume to the buy side after and as they are buying. This is very easy to see. Something moves and all of a sudden, BAM, 10 mill new buyers out of nowhere, so far removed from the action that they will never get filled. Then when/as they stop buying, suddenly the volume disappears.

Summary - buy/sell at market. Watch the depth action, especially outside the top 3-5 lines. You can safely assume that the top 3 lines are "real" on both sides. This is where day traders sit - in the top 3 lines. Outside of that are longer term traders wanting a specific price that they have calculated as reasonable....and the manipulators.
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I think you guys have got it wrong

They arent manipulating.
 
Gringotts Bank said:
This is where day traders sit - in the top 3 lines. Outside of that are longer term traders wanting a specific price that they have calculated as reasonable....and the manipulators.
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No market makers?:confused:
 
CanOz said:
No market makers?:confused:
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Ahhh, good point and it reminds me, I should have said this instead:

If a stock is 'hot' - ie. moving 6% up or down on the day with volume+, then the bots will likely be switched off.

At other times, the price will be moved around a few ticks by bots wanting to accumulate under VWAP on quieter days. These few ticks can be extremely annoying.
 
Tannin said:
1: to change the price artificially - if another market participant just looks at the price, not the trading history, they will be tricked into thinking that the market price has gone up or down.
Click to expand...

Lol. Even if that's what those trades are designed to do, who's fault is it for being lazy by "just looks at the price"? Why ASX doing anything about protecting those who are lazy and uneducated about markets

Tannin said:
2: to swamp the trading history with so many trivial entries that it becomes difficult or impossible for a human trader to see what is actually going on in a timely manner.
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FFS. This is even worse than 1. :banghead:

Many traders have no minimum commission on trades, let alone brokers. So selling 3 shares at a time can be done by many common folks. It's not a practice that is reserved for the manipulative instos.

For those who like conspiracy theories, they often forget that there are many instos competing against each other. If an insto A try sell down a share for no good reason other than manipulation, another insto B may see the price weakness as an opportunity and buy up - Insto A just delivered to Insto B a bunch of cheap shares.

You can't have a bunch of massive instos colluding together so they can squeeze $100 out of the average Joe Trader who had a $5k position. There's not enough profit there for a round of drinks.
 
Imagine the prop group putting up a proposal to Insto management,

"we have this great bot that will take only 1 person to monitor and 1 co-located server per instrument but it will smoke the market, un-leveraged return of 1% a day"

Management,

"Great! how many funds? How many markets?"

Prop group,
"$400,000 per instrument"

Management,
"You mean 40 mil per instrument?"

Prop group,
"No they are really thin, only do 500,000 to a mil turnover a day"

Management,
"someone call security and kick these time wasting fools out"


LOL
 
tech/a said:
???
You wont find market makers in equities?? unless CFD's
Options warrents et al ---yes.
They make a market and pocket the spread.
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I think there are liquidity providers on the larger cap stocks...surely:eek:.
 
CanOz said:
I think there are liquidity providers on the larger cap stocks...surely:eek:.
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Not on ASX. Only in the options market. The closest you will get to liquidity providers are the arb bots. And they sux cuz they stop the evil futs guys from pushing the market around :rolleyes: ;)
 
Facts:

--Bots exist
--They exist even on very thinly traded and micro cap stocks.
--We know this because no one in his right mind would spend $10-15 to buy/sell stock of value $1.
--They are instruments of institutions
--Their purpose is to get a better entry/exit
--One known algorithm is "buy <= VWAP". Maybe there are others.
--To achieve their aim, a bot may buy/sell into itself to artificially manipulate the price, in order to force other traders to give up a tick here or there.


In question:

--Who uses them. I suspect almost exclusively instos, not private traders. Too much risk would exist for an individual.
--What other sorts of activities they get up to. I have strong suspicions that bots on certain stocks will jump in front of your trade with a string of tiny trdaes the moment they see it in the queue in order to get you to trade above your price. I can't prove it but it has happened a hell of a lot on AGI stock.
-- Can it be considered cheating?
 
tech/a said:
Why and who wants to create this liquidity?
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Tech, if there are no providers of liquidity, an issue could just go on an unlimited run, like they do on news....couldn't they?:eek:

I thought all markets had liquidity providers, with the exception of interbank FX.

Who will provide a floor if a market turns a little thin?

Yup, seems as this was mentioned before....here.
 
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