On an occasion some months ago - I placed an offer for an uneven number of shares to match the available cash available. I placed the offer into a empty price slot to be the first to ensure execution
The Etrade list on another screen showed two orders had been placed I shifted my price to the next empty price slot Etrade now showed two orders on that new price slot and no orders now on the first price slot The changes appeared immediately
My thought at the time was that either someone was able to observe trades at the very same moment these were being placed and was then able to then insert an offer ahead of my offer being placed
Now considering the issues of fast electronic trading that has been developed to operate at lightening speed in my opinion the laws rules regulations and methods have not been updated
One issue seems to be - That by placing a single minimum offer in several adjoining sequence of price slots on both the sell side and the buy side one would have control of any secondary offers that are placed
And then monitoring the subsequent buy/sell offers being placed they take advantage by changing and shifting the quantities of their offers
So by being the first offer in the sequence of price slots they can increase decrease or remove their offer
This is in order to make other following offers that are placed made available or blocked from execution
Could it be called Lambs to the Slaughter?
It would seem to be a simple way to manipulate the SP which some may have used to advantage
One possible solution - To clean this up maybe changing the method to something similar as real estate auction bidder identity numbers when offers are placed an ID number would enable better transparency between buyers and sellers
Real estate auctions were a virtual scam before being cleaned up by this method
One would be able to see these ones and twos quantity offers and other suspicious quantity offers for what they are
One can hardly claim Let the Buyer Beware when so little information is available or so much is hidden from them
They should be able to make a clean decision without diving into dark waters Which seems to be the best option now available
Making these offer ID numbers viewable to anyone placing an order would go a long way to reducing the suspicion of scams
The ID would last the term of the market day and changed the following market day
Making the information available then Let the Buyer Beware does become an honest option
