Ann: Trading Halt, page-169

Opening auction is one of the most interesting aspects of trading.

All trades must be out and declared - no broker or hidden trades - and no 'at market', must all be offers or bids.

In a complex play with lots of players - check FMG on a busy day - it gets very hard to analyze - big players (say day traders who will enter at open if the odds suit them) will use a bot to tell them what is happening. Best most of us can do is have a good platform and if you intend to trade opens a lot then get WebIress or similar which will update in real time within a fraction of a second of an order being accepted by ASX.

Where the retail player gets screwed is the uncanny ability of the Big Bots to know in advance pretty well exactly when the market group will open within its 30 sec random spread.

"Opening takes place at 10:00 am Sydney time and lasts for about 10 minutes. ASX Trade calculates opening prices during this phase. Securities open in five groups, according to the starting letter of their ASX code:
Group 1 10:00:00 am +/- 15 secs A-B, e.g. ANZ, BHP
Group 2 10:02:15 am +/- 15 secs C-F, e.g. CPU, FXJ
Group 3 10:04:30 am +/- 15 secs G-M, e.g. GPT
Group 4 10:06:45 am +/- 15 secs N-R, e.g. QAN
Group 5 10:09:00 am +/- 15 secs S-Z, e.g. TLS
The time is randomly generated by ASX Trade and occurs up to 15 seconds on either side of the times given above, e.g. group 1 may open at any time between 9:59:45 am and 10:00:15 am." Courtesy CommSec.

How do they do it ??? Must be magic,could not be connivance!!