More evidence market is completely manipulated by fund managers with OPM (other peoples money).
See here how shorts are getting stacked on the market during the recent ‘run up’. This I have seen time and again prior to crashes on individual stocks and it is now happening market wide.
How is it possible to load up shorts when the market is going up and there are other sellers about? Because they are buying shares hand over fist with other peoples money (superannuation etc) while they themselves (and the proprietary traders behind the so called chinese walls) take the opposite side of the trade with shorts.
They want to force the indexes up as high as possible before the crash as the more they force it up prior, the highe thr price they can put on shorts at, the more profit they will make when they switch the HFT algos to 'fat finger' collapse mode.
This is HIGHLY ABERRANT market wide shorting. Highest level of market wide shorts in 5 years.
And note that each day subsequent to the highest orange bar there have been successive heavy shorting days – (red bars) which will add to the overall short position in coming days.
This is pure market manipulation by the tier-one financial sector and believe me, they are going to tank it hard.
With ASIC's help they have cowed and driven any retail investors/traders from the market over the last two years with veiled threats and illegal order frontrunning so there will be no interference from the pesky retail side when it is time to hit the big red button.
I guess, given the level of shorting, maybe they are going to drive the ASX down 15% to 20%, and given the dearth of capital amongst the juniors, this may see hundreds of companies go into administration and be de-listed returning a 100% profit to the shorts.
For the first time ever over the last year I have seen shorts active on microcap companies with market caps if under 5 million..
After the bloodbath is over they will 'capitulate' on their long O.P.M. positions and conveniently close their shorts as they dump the superannuation shares onto their own hands (unrelated party, technically an independent legal entity! Honest!)
And you can rest assured that thanks to ASIC and the ASX, all the profits for this imminent destruction of the Australian public markets will end up overseas.... in the balance sheets of Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch and the other major banks who are all seeing an 'inexplicable' rise in profits from trading. Profits that come out of the pockets of every citizen on this planet on whose throats they have their boots.
ASIC will bury it's head in the sand and deny responsibility for allowing these 'forces' to take over the public market in Australia whilst the ATO wonders where all it's tax receipts have gone.
Not long after as tax receipts plummet there will be a massive backflip circus on some other crisis pretext to raise the GST to 20% so we can keep paying all the well heeled useless bureaucrats in Australia.... and of course... at ASIC.
I feel sorry for the politicians who are so out of their depth and kept on their toes by the bureaucracy unions and banksters.
