Hey Rose, Random is absolutely right about those people placing...

Hey Rose,

Random is absolutely right about those people placing the large sell parcels in order to scare others away from buying in the closing auction to increase the likelihood of the price falling.

To add a bit more depth for you, it would be counterintuitive for someone who wants to sell a large holding to place a visibly big order into the market as they would not be able to get the best exit price possible. This is because others would see it either as a point of resistance due to the fact that there also needs to be a correspondingly large buy volume for the price to rise above that level, as well as possibly believe that the "smart money" are leaving the game that would influence others in selling down and lower the price.

What large investors do to mitigate this is to use a program that would split their order up into numerous smaller parcels and then gradually enter them in the order book so that it doesn't overwhelm others. On Iresstrader which you can sign up for on Nabtrade, this is known as "iceberging the order", and different platforms will have different names for this order type.

The same can also be said for large buy orders as well to try to make it out as if there is strong support for the share price.

Hope this helps