Short Squeeze, page-359

Now shorting is a bit too dangerous, the shorters have their bots out to try to keep the price down!

Any trade for less than $250, is likely to be a bot trade. Probably plenty of bot sales at higher $ figures too. Why place a buy or sell order for such a small sum? It must be a given they are automated and paying nothing for the trade. But why bother? Answer is, bots are playing against other bots trying to either trade variations in the price of a few %, or nudge the price up or down, often both. When the price moves for no apparent reason or against the tide in heavily manipulated stocks, you often see lots of bot trades.

Wash trading plays a big part in this. 1 trader, 2 or more accounts. He wants to keep the price down (say cos he wants to reduce his short exposure). Not game to short sell - so sells from one account and buys in the other. But how do know someone else is not going to buy your sale order 1 pip below the current trading range? Well, first you stack the buy side with buy orders from your other trading account, adding trade flags, which are small bot sized trades. If someone selling other than you sells to that order, you immediately pull all your buy orders on that line, and hold off until the other person has finished selling. You also have trading bot buy flags a pip higher, so when that trades, your reinstate your stacking a pip below, complete with bot flags, and sell to yourself until someone else starts selling at that level. None of this can work unless you are placing and removing trade orders in nanoseconds - which only bots can do.

And yes - all of this is legal (or at least never prosecuted) - all in the name of liquidity!

1259 trades today - 658 of which were trades under $250. Price goes down against the tide. See the connection?

BUT, this strategy cannot hold back the tide long against positive sentiment. Hopefully another positive sign of impending turnaround!