I find your various concerns very valid and am myself angry about the injustice of it all. What the complaints boil down to is: The wholesale fraternity has the means to fleece the retail traders and investors. Fund managers, with other people's money, and large investment institutions with the deepest pockets can most easily afford the use of computerised trading systems.
The difficulty I see, and I find even the ASX must be faced with, is the inability to distinguish between a "Let's take this bid out and see if there are sellers willing to sell it to us for less." and "Let's take these bids out an push the price lower, forcing the sellers to accpet our lower bids." Trying to pay an overall lower price is quite legitimate - we all try to buy as low as possible. If we can assess the situation correctly and "expect" the price to drop, we may also engage in a bit of day trading, sell a few at a higher price, then pick them up - or more - at a lower level.
The SUSPICION that some market participants have ulterior motives and act more pro-actively - because of their size and market-moving clout - is not sufficient PROOF that they actually DO such a thing.
That is the reason why I have pretty much abandoned any notion of "fair value", based on analysis of financials, let alone following press articles and "eggspurt opinions". Instead, I apply Technical Analysis, which lets me extract different trends - short, medium, long term. Whether a change of trading levels is then brought about by bots, retail reaction to press articles, or any other means - it all becomes less relevant. The price hits resistance while I hold: I take profit. It finds support and looks set to turn: I buy. That way, I can benefit from instos' activities, rather than fight them and feed their bottom line.
The attached chart may explain my point: Finding a Bullish MACD Divergence on and after August 10 caused me to take profit - regardless whether "fair value" was $1 or $3: Current price appeared to have hit resistance. So I sold. Since then it appears to have found support, and I've begun to buy again. Tight stops for a while - my guess could be wrong. Once my position is in profit, I reassess whether to add, let it run, or merely move my trailing stop a notch higher.
BTA Price at posting:
$1.96 Sentiment: Buy Disclosure: Held
