I think a lot of these recent crazy SP movements are the result...

I think a lot of these recent crazy SP movements are the result of what is trading this stock.

As I read it, trading in CCP is dominated (big time) by algo trades.

When I look at the current list of buys, I can see eight separate orders for 584 shares a pop. The highest of these bids is $8.85, the lowest $8.76. It is almost a certainty that these bids are from the one thingy. The sell orders are similar, arguably worse. Although there are two sell orders for 584 shares (presumably the same thingy that has the buy orders), there are a few other orders for just a few hundred shares.

This means that if someone wants to sell 10,000 (or buy) at market then the price they can't. A genuine order of this size would move the market lots. What's worse, I suspect that invisible to the market there are a bunch of algos, waiting, sensing, like crazed predators, to see my order of 10,000 hit the market and in the milliseconds before it is executed, they will front run it, and to leave me with an even worse price than what the market indicates.

This 'bot' behavior has left the CCP SP in a perpetual state of undeserved volatility. This is undeserved, because these algo trades have little, if any, connection to the underlying company and traditional values of investing on merit. All of the market signals I am getting from CCP lately are in my view products code logic and as such are fake and foul.

What I mean front running is that if I try and sell when the market bid is at $8.85 the the algos are likely to do two things:
a) a bunch of small bids will appear below $8.85 forcing the price down, and
b) The bids in the market (in this case the 584 bids) will all disappear, leaving a void for my sell order to fall into.
Consequently I have no idea what price to expect.

Then, sure as eggs is eggs, as soon as my order has been filled, at say $8.60 the alogs will reassess the new market and might just trade up again at $8.85, or if my sell order has triggered say a stop loss order, the SP may dive another 25c, before another assessment is made.

This is all crazy stuff. I have learnt to live though it. But rather than try and find meaning in it, I just suffer the short term volatility and uncertainty and find comfort in the belief that the SP will eventually reach my 'sell target' of $12.00.

I suspect algos should be, and will ultimately be banned, but what can we do in the mean time?

K