Attempted Manipulation

[Mr_Bean]

Why would a buyer make an offer to buy woolies at 1151, for only 1 share, and the next nearst buyer is 1175 and higher. Then suddenly there is a trade of only 1 share at 1150? Is this an attempt to force margin calls, forcing sellers to sell at much lower prices than the share is actually trading at? Any comments on woolies price?

[striker]

Manipulation is rife in the market - surprised you've only noticed it now. Tis the work of traders going short. While it is simple to drive a sh/price down,as a l/term investor my biggest gripe is you cant drive the price up.Only a Bull market can do that,but even in such a market prices can be driven down ! Seems like the short traders have it both ways .Does'nt seem right !

[#3]

You see - here's an example of short-sellers being blamed for the world's woes. Introduce the uptick rule! Ban shorting! And let the long traders create bubbles in their wake...

[Copper]

Some *&$King idiot is deliberately pushing ACL down...

[striker]

Timato was'nt it you calling for a Bull/Bear truce recently? You short traders are a little defensive it appears.Your point about investors /Bulls creating bubbles by chasing prices continually up,assumes that we like overpaying for shares,and have no insight into fundamentals.Share prices will always go down based on weakness in the economy,poor profit outlook,and sentiment.That is the market we're in right now,and short selling can only exacerbate the continued weakness !

[#6]

I apologise if you found my post offensive. It was not intended personally. I had advanced a view in a post earlier this morning (re. the uptick rule) that short-sellers get unfairly blamed when there are fundamental reasons for price declines. I would recommemd the article that I referenced in that post. Your post appears to allocate blame unfairly to the short-sellers, and my comment was intended for the readers of the original post, to see an example of what I considered unfair. Shorting may temporarily depress prices, but at the same time, going long temporarily elevates prices. Very few traders only ever go short and never long. Therefore the very people who you claim drive down prices during bear markets (allowing you a better entry) will go long up at other times (presumably allowing you to realise a greater profit). I therefore really cannot see why you should have a negative view of traders who go short.

[striker]

Timato -here's the situation- As a l/term investor,I do my homework on a particular share ,using fundamental appraisal,P/E,D/Y ratios cash flow analysis ,bal. sheet strength etc.,before buying a stock. I hold the stock,maybe adding more on any weakness,for the long ride. Now some shorty comes along,and decides the share price ,doing nicely for all the right reasons,is in his judgement ,a target for shorting and sets about destroying value,in his pursuit of a quick buck.As mentioned above,it's the easiest thing to drive the price down,and all the investors stop losses are now triggered,and we're left without our carefuuly chosen stock and probably a loss on the sale!!! Of couse Shorty has done the destruction,got his bucks,and moves on to his next target.You tell me why we should be gratefull, and believe you are serving some useful purpose in the market,other than making a hit and run ,fast buck, at the expense of genuine investors ??????

[#8]

I understand your stop-loss issue. There may be rogue traders who attempt to trigger stop-losses as you suggest. I would think that the solution to this problem is to make stop-losses more intelligent, e.g. only trigger if the volume below your trigger price exceeds x shares, etc. Note that even if short-selling was to be completely banned, your problem would persist - rogue investors could sell one share at a very low price, triggering stop-losses, in order to get a better entry price. Most traders do not engage in this sort of behaviour, so to make sweeping statements about short traders is unfair. Traders add liquidity, and thereby reduce volatility. When the long-term investors want to buy or sell, there are traders constantly buying and selling, and so the investor can enter and exit more easily, with a smaller bid/offer spread than if the traders were not there. This is not some whack idea I've just come up with; I believe it is established theory. As an example, look at how the UK and US markets behaved at the end of last year when shorting was partially banned - very volatile and large declines.

[#9]

SB does not appear to offer an option on their stop-losses to only trigger if the volume under the trigger price exceeds a threshold. Does anyone know how else to make one's stop-loss more resilient against low-volume trades at ridiculously low prices? Does anyone agree that we should put the volume-threshold feature on our OST shopping list?

[striker]

You make an excellent point here Timato - I agree totally with your idea.The stop loss could maybe trigger once a volume threshold has been reached in a specified timeframe.