@Destria – Just looking at Broker data without doing some I...

@Destria – Just looking at Broker data without doing some I believe extensive analysis over time is probably a waste of time. You need to identify which Brokers are buying/selling for the “Smart Money”, i.e. the professional groups that are in the background building/accumulating large positions or selling/distributing their holdings. You can only do this by focussing closely on the Broker data and comparing the “Net Volume” to price action on a chart. Not easy and it takes a lot of effort over an extended period of time. The people who actual incorporate Broker data into their systems focus on a small number of stocks and do a large amount of investigation over time in order to make sense out of this data, and then only use the data as a last check before taking a position.

There are some obvious Broker to Trader/Investor relationships of course. ComSec for instance can be regarded as a Broker for Retail Investors. Back in early July, on the chart thread, I think we came to the conclusion that CLSAus (CLSA Australia) was probably buying on behalf of professional groups, and I can remember asking the question; if any Poster had knowledge of which Brokers the smart money trading OGX were using to let us know. Of course there was no answer to this question. Either those who know want to keep it a secret or no one knows. I think the answer is the latter!

So back to Bosco’s post. You need to determine the date range of the data. Broker data is available up to 2 days in the past. Hence the end data for each of the data sets in the screen shots would be at the best 12/07 (last Thursday). The start date for the first screen shot (SS1) was 09/07 (last Monday) and the second screen shot (SS2) 11/07.

So what does the data tell us?

ComSec (Retail) was the biggest net buyer at the start of the week, while PatSec (Patersons Securities) were the largest net sellers. Patersons does do some institutional dealing but I have a feeling most of the net selling was on behalf of their Retail Clients. By the end of the week (SS2) Comsec buying fell sharply and PatSec was still selling. Net volume from other Brokers was small except for CMC Markets who was a net seller early in the week then a buyer at the end of the week. I’m pretty sure that CMC Markets can be considered to be a Retail Broker.

So most if not all of the action was from Retail Traders/Investors, IMO, and the one Broker who we previously thought may be Smart Money (CLSAus) was totally absent. I guess this a good sign. I don’t know what Bosco or Rose saw in the data and I don’t think we will ever find out. But it is nice of them to post the Broker data – thanks Bosco and Rose.

Wilf - remember DYOR!