time to fill some gaps, page-8

Don't panic - it's the algorithmic bot traders hitting it hard. They sit in their broker's offices, running the bot computers, and walk the price down in small parcels, often selling back to themselves so they actually have a net sell of zero. Two computers, different IP addresses, one buying, the other selling. Look at the buy and sell sides of the market depth - loaded with those very small parcels.

Then look at the course of sales - each time a small trade goes through, it walks the price down a cent or two.

Once the price is down and can't be pushed down any further by shaking more panic merchants out of the trees, then the traders will start the bots into buying mode and eventually the price will come back up.

Happens all the time with PDN - it's one of their favourite stocks to load up on at lower prices using DMA bot trading.

I've spoken to the surveillance dept at the ASX on several occasions about this, and they tell me that while it is strictly speaking quite legal, they personally don't like it - it sails VERY close to manipulating but not quite.

No way can we fight it, so all we can do is recognise it when it happens - like today - and use their efforts of pushing the price down as an opportunity to get in some more at lower prices.

You need to keep an eye on the market depth split into its component parts (like in ProTrader) and the course of sales, to recognise what's happening.

I'm patient - no way are they going to shake the shares out of my hands... ;)