algo trades

Those of you watching closely will probably have noticed the CER bot is operating this afternoon. I'm not sure we have seen him for a while.

From the course of sales, it looks like it was switched on around 12:30 and seems to be executing quite a primitive (yet quite effective) price lowering (i.e. acquisition) strategy in conjunction with what looks like some ask-side stacking.

Naughty, naughty, very naughty. Yet not against any ASX rules of course.

You will notice that it's currently pulsing about every 2-3 minutes with sales into the bid line between 1010 and 1200 shares. The time period between 12:52:47 and about 14:00:00 gives the best examples, with the bot being on a 3 minute cycle for a lot of this period.

If they are running to plan, we should see the bot order size start to drop in the run up to close and a reappearance again tomorrow.

It's very effective... as you will probably realise if you've sold into the action today.