disgraceful yet again

Bots had a break this morning, and TOX was able to find a balanced price.

Then, this last couple of hours, those bloody bots have been at it again. It's not just the tiny bot trades per se that bother me - it's the fact that they are allowed to cross a spread of several cents to walk the price down and cap it.

Price was sitting nicely at 2.54, then whammo - a couple of tiny bot trades at 2.49 then 2.48.

As I've posted before, if it were you or me crossing a spread that way, and specifically either to support a price or knock it down as happened here, we'd be getting a phone call from the ASX or the broker in minutes.

A couple of years ago, I was snapping up 500-share parcels of TOX to build my holdings a bit more, but without slamming a big buy order in while the liquidity was very low. My order crossed the spread on the upside by 4 cents, and I got a phone call from CommSec IMMEDIATELY, on my mobile. They told me that I could not do that, as it breach ASX rules and was obviously supporting the price. My intentions were no such thing, as I told them. But they still wouldn't let me put in that BUY order. I had to put it in at 1 cent above the last traded price, and it took 2 days before the order got filled.

Now we see bots doing exactly what I was not allowed to do, but this being blatantly for price manipulation.

And yes - I contacted the ASX about this happening a few days ago, and got the standard "we see no signs of illegal activity" guff in return.

It stinks!