What's with the trades of one or two shares?

BigKiwi · 14 August 2009

Hello
Yesterday I watched with interest as the price of LNG continued to rise. What I was hoping to discover is the reasons, and legality, of selling one share. I looked at the course of sales and several times when there were a few trades at one price, then there would be a sale of 1 unit for $0.01 higher than the previous price, then a few more large trades then another trade of 1 unit up another cent. It looked like someone was really manipulating the price up, without having to buy large amounts of stock to get the price up.

My reasoning for this was that someone who held a lot of stock they had bought at a low price was now pushing the price up with these single unit sales, then when the price was high, they could sell more of their stock at the higher price.

Is this feasible or am I totally off track? Is this legal and how is it possible when I thought there were minimum trade sizes or vlaues in place?

tech/a · 14 August 2009

Re: What is with the trades for one or two shares??

Odd lots.
Had my first single share sale today when I sold on stop limit.

jono1887 · 16 August 2009

Re: What is with the trades for one or two shares??

tech/a said:
Odd lots.
Had my first single share sale today when I sold on stop limit.

are there any other reasons?

skyQuake · 16 August 2009

Broker games. Sometimes in less liquid shares, they will trade 1 share so a bar is printed, makes chart looks more liquid that share really is.

Or someone buying thru IB to get into a SPP

white_crane · 17 August 2009

Have a look at the course of sales for BKY this morning, no announcements or otherwise anything else going on (that I know of)...

11:04 130,206 111.5 2
11:02 127,706 111 1
10:58 120,115 111 1
10:55 115,241 111 1
10:53 112,127 111 2
10:51 108,321 111 2
10:50 105,537 111 2
10:42 91,295 111 2
10:38 82,734 111 1
10:32 71,662 111.5 2
10:31 70,179 110 2
10:26 59,384 110 2
10:20 48,061 110 2
10:12 32,401 110 4
10:12 32,400 110 2
10:10 28,513 110 1,000 XT
10:05 13,325 110 3
10:00 2,790 110 266
10:00 2,789 110 9,000
10:00 2,788 110 8,634
10:00 2,787 110 13
10:00 2,786 110 17,353
10:00 2,785 110 647

ceasar73 · 20 August 2009

I was just about to post the same thread.
Some funny business going on for sure...love to know the exact reason

soren_lorensen · 20 August 2009

BigKiwi said:
Hello
Yesterday I watched with interest as the price of LNG continued to rise. What I was hoping to discover is the reasons, and legality, of selling one share. I looked at the course of sales and several times when there were a few trades at one price, then there would be a sale of 1 unit for $0.01 higher than the previous price, then a few more large trades then another trade of 1 unit up another cent. It looked like someone was really manipulating the price up, without having to buy large amounts of stock to get the price up.

My reasoning for this was that someone who held a lot of stock they had bought at a low price was now pushing the price up with these single unit sales, then when the price was high, they could sell more of their stock at the higher price.

Is this feasible or am I totally off track? Is this legal and how is it possible when I thought there were minimum trade sizes or vlaues in place?

Big Kiwi, i'm also suspicious about this point you raise, if i'm just using a watchlist it doesn't show market depth, all i see is the current price everytime i refresh the watchlist, i get live data, but i am inclined to think potentially some individual is buying one or two units just to get to the next level up.

if you were watching a stock in the morning to see if it starts to rise on the open for example on a potential breakout, if there is resistance met at a particular level, and you wanted to shift a big parcel of units at a higher price, why not try and ramp it up a bit, say its at 1.15 and not budging, buy one at 1.16, this maynot work on the bigger cap stocks but smaller,

if your not looking at DOM you can only see the price going up and not be able to tell how much weight is behind the shift?

any other comments on this?

nunthewiser · 21 August 2009

Often used as dirty great big flags to alert each other between individual parties .seen the "1" used many time before Xtrades seen "123" used . seen many ...... if not a trading bot its only known between the partys that know ........

lots of other reasons but that is one i know of amongst others

tech/a · 21 August 2009

nunthewiser said:
Often used as dirty great big flags to alert each other between individual parties .seen the "1" used many time before Xtrades seen "123" used . seen many ...... if not a trading bot its only known between the partys that know ........

lots of other reasons but that is one i know of amongst others

ROLF.
Havent they heard of a phone!

nunthewiser · 21 August 2009

tech/a said:
ROLF.
Havent they heard of a phone!

may pay you to watch a few live depths instead of taking the piiss darl .

Aussiest · 21 August 2009

nunthewiser said:
Often used as dirty great big flags to alert each other between individual parties .seen the "1" used many time before Xtrades seen "123" used . seen many ...... if not a trading bot its only known between the partys that know ........

I love this theory.

I've also noticed large orders, eg, 30,000 units will sometimes appear then suddenly disappear without much effect on the SP. Maybe they're the X trades

Btw, love the market depth.

What's with the trades of one or two shares?

BigKiwi

tech/a

No Ordinary Duck

jono1887

skyQuake

white_crane

Jedi Master

ceasar73

soren_lorensen

nunthewiser

tech/a

No Ordinary Duck

nunthewiser

Aussiest

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