Short Term Trading Week Starting: 23 Apr, page-106

The way that I read those small trades is, that the broker may be attempting to trigger stop losses, or is checking for supply or demand with small price changes. If there is no demand at a higher price, they can be more confident that buyers aren't waiting off screen, and that they may take the share price down lower, if they want to buy lower. They have to scare other buyers off, or bore them due to lack of movement, before they can do this. If there is no selling at a lower price trigger, due to them buying a small parcel lower, they are comfortable moving the price higher, more confident that they won't encounter a flood of selling. Otherwise, I sometimes read it as they are messing with the more popular indicators, like the RSI , to bring the share out of oversold etc. A share has to be primed before it can go on a big move. If it is oversold, it will need to be brought back down, before it can make a big move up. Indicators like the RSI don't take volume into account, so they can just do it with small sized parcels.