OCC Trading, page-1647

Not technically manipulation by ASX and ASIC tolerance levels, just the new natural order of electronic and algorithimic marketing making, alas, all tolerated as a necessary compromise for increased liquiidity provision. ASIC is a bit of a raging tiger with retail and easily provable stuff, but a toothless one when it comes to algorithmic market making and execution by the big boys - all a bit too much for a $80K a year market officer to compete with mutli-million dollar algorithms. You average punter does not appreciate how much volume is electronic.

Around 50% of equities execution in the US market is now electronic. AUS will not be far behind:

"Electronic trading platforms captured 44% of buy-side US equities order flow in 2023, up from 42% in 2022, according to a Coalition Greenwich report, US Equity Markets 2024: Trends and Opportunities.16 Jan 2024Electronic platforms capture growing share of US equity" (this just buy-side)

"Passive investments such as index funds and exchange-traded funds control about 60% of the equity assets, while quantitative funds, those which rely on trend-following models instead of fundamental research from humans, now account for 20% of the market share, according to estimates from J.P. Morgan."

(passive funds will be as much as 80% electronic execution in the US - AUS I can't tell you).