I would not use the word ‘illegal’ in relation to any particular...

I would not use the word ‘illegal’ in relation to any particular trade, or because the price went down on the day. However, the market yesterday, 30 Oct., shows the current MO of what I think is manipulative trading. Here is a screen shot of the orders in the market at 10.03.34am. I have added the orange-coloured annotations:-





There is a ‘wall’ of Sell orders @ 4.05, 4.06, & 4.07, which were not there earlier, at 9.52am., so they were all placed a few minutes before/after 10am. It would take some unusually large Buy orders to get the price up over $4.07. Similar ‘walls’ have been there for some weeks.

Here is the Course of Trades, imported into a spreadsheet, with my orange-coloured notes added:-



(note - it often takes more than one trade to fill one order.)
. 4500 at about 10.11am, filled all of the orders that were in the market at 10.03.34am down to $3.75, plus [email protected] and some @3.70, and this lowered the price from the previous Close by 24c. This could have been a genuine holder who has decided to reduce their holding, and that is disappointing. However it could also have been a manipulative trader, who can now use the funds to buy back in and sell again, ie. ‘churning’.
. 4 ‘down-tick’ Sell orders, down to the Buy price, value less than $500, could not have been placed by a retail trader on CommSec.
. 1 ‘up-tick’ Buy 121 at the Seller’s price, unusual because of the low value, could not have been a retail trader.

Just another day for AVR on the ASX. I hope we can all hang on until this activity can be dealt with effectively. Where to start? - who is placing those ‘wall’ and ‘down-tick’ orders?