autobot flickering and other bot mischief

There are allot of autbot trading styles that exist but the one thats seems to be getting the most attention with MAK is the flicker

If you look through todays course of sale data you can see how those one share transactions flickered the price up at critical junctions :) if you go through the previous day you can see how the autobots were flickering down

Flickering is-

A small transaction intra day thats often against the previous course of sale and is designed to step up or down the price direction. Autbot trades come from one of the brokerages or investment houses , they flicker the price in a particular direction to see if they can get the buyers or sellers to follow make a trade. Take for instance this example with MAK today where the price has been flickered upwards

5/13/2008 11:58 2.30 1099
5/13/2008 11:58 2.30 1
5/13/2008 11:57 2.29 1702

see how the autbot hit the sell side with a single 1 share transaction to raise the price from 2.29 to 2.30 This is a flicker it designed to flush out nervous buyers here is another

5/13/2008 11:06 2.29 205
5/13/2008 11:06 2.28 3
5/13/2008 11:06 2.25 5273


and they dont have to be for a single share, remember these folk pay for yearly direct access so they dont have to pay fees per trade. Equally you may see a flicker after a trading pause of a few minutes, this is designed to re assure the sellers or buyers

I think it is mostly done to catch those who ONLY refer to the Price/Volume data provided on a watchlist via Brokers sites.

Autobots are also used for churning, that is when two legally separate beneficial owners illegally conspire to churn a share up or down (impossible to prove). In this case I agree with a trading partner to churn say 500,000 shares so I sell into my partners pre set up buy side he in turn sells into my buy side and so on we together churn the price down.

In real terms we still have roughly the same 500,000 shares between us as we are each in turn selling and buying, we sweep up on the way spilled stop losses and weak hands.

Then in turn we churn up the price selling the spilled shares we have acquired

This is mostly kept below the 5% declaration threshold but occasionally they will accidentally poke their head above the 5% and you can get insight in their patterns

Here is a rare snapshot into JP Morgans trading of SGX check the spread sheet at the end and then compare to the historic price movements

http://aspect.comsec.com.au/asxdata/20080207/pdf/00810026.pdf

Autobots trade SGX all day everyday JP look to be doing it in via 4 related parties

"JFCP" = JF Capital Partners Limited
"HCM" = Highbridge Capital Management, LLC.
"JPMWF" = J.P. Morgan Whitefriars Inc.
"JPMSAL" = J.P. Morgan Securities Australia Limited
"JPMSL" = J.P. Morgan Securities Limited

Its almost certain that JPM or one of the other investment brokerages now have a large trading stake in MAK, this increases volatility as they try and "milk" the stock as it heads up as we get further into it we will get large sell downs like we just experienced

folks will be going OMG what is happening, why are folk selling, OMG do they know something I dont, OMG I better sell, they sell into the JPM bot and their share get gobbled up on the cheap

its all part of the game

thats why its amusing when everyone panics its just the bots shaking the tree