broker trade vol, page-30

Hi BR – appreciate your insights and point of view here.

Not for Lynas – but many smaller specs often have top 10 holders listed as Commsec nominee accounts. And activity around these nom accounts sometimes suggests to me that Commsec walks both side of the street.

So for example on a spec (which shall remain nameless) – through a complex option conversion deal with “related” parties a 50m share holding is acquired and placed in a Commsec nom account. A p&d occurs on an announcement which is associated with considerable bot activity, lots of XT trades. At the end of the day, no shares are left in the nom account. Looking at broker codes all you think you see are retail trades.

So maybe theres a grey area between instos (in the sense that we usually mean them) and retail.

Anytime you get a stock everyday in the HC most posted for months on end you know straight away there is a fleecing machine at work. Other than the illusion of intermittent reinforcement combined with distracting and confusing FA the reality is that most (and me just as much as anyone) are just not good enough to trade it.

Whether we call this manipulation or not is perhaps semantics - like the argument from design for God – the existence of fleecing machines suggests a designer to those who believe in higher powers – to others not so. If thats not getting to philosophical about the whole thing.