Courtesy of our friend Brikk:
OT: Weekly Thoughts: Learn How to Play the Game: Invest Wisely and Trade Smartly
The savvy long-term investors never chase stocks up. For the most part that is
momentum players and daytraders where most of it or what follows is dumb
money. Instead the long-term investors use a couple of simple strategies in
order to position themselves. One is to find a stock no one immediately sees
has huge potential and accumulate. Long-term investors are not interested in
trading against the public mind or the dumb money. That's where the majority
of the money can be made but even more can be made if the base of a stock is
held extremely strong by investors. However the second is not to doubt the
research which is the underlying basis for going long and holding.
More and more investors are winning the game nowadays despite all bashers that
float through the Internet that has become part of the game. Floor traders of
market makers often watch CNBC, news wires and bulletin boards in order to
follow the market during trading session. OTC BB market makers (MMs) don't use
fundamental and technical analysis. However, what they do realize is a lot of
dumb money does use this newest nitch charting or TA (Technical Analysis) to
run a stock either up or down. To the MMs this is like taking candy from a
baby. Simply they will paint the tape and use whatever tactic to affect the
charting bands. Thus the public and dumb money they will have eating out of
their hands. Effectively the MMs can show a strong stock growing weak by
manipulating the close price in order to generate selling volume, delaying
trading time to manipulate trading activities, or even stalling the ask
without honoring orders to hold a stock price.
MMs follow a simple code of business when making a market in a stock
especially an OTC BB. That is the level that stocks will seek that yields the
most volume. Now this is very important because they make money on the volume
buying at the bid and selling at the ask. In other words, by making the market
they are buying low and selling high. Now smart money adheres to that rule, so
do all the market makers. They could careless whether the stock is at $83 or
at $0.23. All they care about is the action thus being able to sell stock at
the offer (The high) and buy stock at the bid (The low). To increase their
profitability, they make the spread as great as possible on as many shares as
they can especially if the volume falls off.
When they have mostly all "buy" orders, that's not the price that's going to
yield the most volume. They need both buy and sells to get the maximum action.
Remember, MMs play the volume. If the volume decreases and there are mostly
Buys that become a one way volume, Buy volume. So what they do is let the
stock run up to a price where it runs out of steam. They fill all the buy
orders there that they can and then comes the pullback one way or another
naturally or induced. During the pull back they can buy tons of shares and
flip them to those averaging down or trying to catch the bounce. At some
price, the stock will be relatively stable and yield the most volume. Now that
is the average price you will see
The average price is the point where a stock seeks a level where MMs can
profit on the most volume. So during the day that is the price that MMs and
momentum/day traders want to see the stock at. Why? Because they know the
public and dumb money was chasing the price thing up. Most of the time, the
MMs love a flurry of Market Orders which is a dead sign of an artificial run
or momentum. Merely it is money in the bank for them. Most get hung in a
momentum or day trade or by the tactics of Market makers, who are in the
business to screw the public every chance they get and the NASD is not going
to do anything about it. They are merely making the market liquid is there
reasoning.
The market makers have created an added complication to the OTCBB's chaos of
the already volatile intra-day price movements created by dumb money, momentum
and day-traders. MMs can not relate to long-term holders in the OTC BB. That
makes absolutely no sense what so ever. They feel a large percentage of trades
in the OTC BB market consist of short-term or day-trades, MMs merely view the
barrage of buy and sell orders as relatively neutral to the market. How they
figure it is when the average dumb money buys shares in a company, the MMs
feel or rather know with some certainty it is very likely that dumb money will
want to sell back those shares relatively quick on the slightest drop.
Now somewhat comfortable with this logic the MMs merely short sells into the
buying and attempts to take the stock down in an effort to "shake out" the
weak. Since it is tough to know for sure whether a move is the beginning of a
trend, or a routine shake out, this type of deception works quite well for the
MMs. What the long-termers do to a stock is surprise the MMs because instead
of falling the shorting has no effect and the price goes up. Now that puts the
MM at selling low through shorting and thus having to buy high in order to
cover.
Boy, when this happens, the MMs are not very happy campers. The investors and
traders are supposed to be doing that no them. Now it becomes time to pull out
every trick and tactic in the book in order to attempt to get a Bear Raid at
every dollar mark or percent from where the stock started. Could be a penny in
smaller priced securities? What MMs do is give you a chance to make a small
amount of money for your momentum and day trading style by shorting it at
these levels and trying to get a bear raid each time. Each failure is
compounding the MMs short position so they let it go to the next level. Now
come more deliberate tactics MMs use to coerce Bear Raid or panic selling.
Once the MM is caught short and the strength of the buy is overpowering the MM
will want to cover his short position. So the MMs call up one of his friendly
MMs and says some like "the weather is sure rough today." The MM along with
the other "friendly MM initiates a down tick about the same time. Now this can
also be done with a certain amount of shares such as an infamous 100 shares
flag. This down tick gives the illusion of weakness designed to hopefully
begin the bear raid of selling. The fickle, fearful, day trader, momentum and
short term begin to sell out allowing the MM to cover his short position at
lower prices. They will move it down quickly to get it to a price of least
financial damage. Problem they have is long-term investors in the OTC BB. They
start accumulating and buying comes flying in when they take it too far thus
the MMs took it to the point of volume again and not only investors the other
MMs step in the make money on the spread.
Alas the poor MM does not get to cover. Now comes various tactics like
stalling, boxing, or even locking the Bid and Ask for a while.
Of course, MMs aggressively deny any sort of collusion designed to fix quotes
or spreads, but a recent SEC investigation tells another story.
MMs have a vast resource of tactics and it would take probably more than my
lifetime to figure them all out.
So how do investors somehow manage to overcome the obvious deception in OTCBB
arena? One answer is indirection trading style by going long which the MMs do
not expect. In the war between investors and public companies on the OTC BB vs
the MMs, if the MMs have all the advantages due to position or other factors,
direct confrontation such as momentum or day trading hitting the stock is a
definite death sentence.
However, an indirect approach tends to weaken the path of least resistance
before slowly overcoming it. The most effective way is long-term investors
slowly accumulating and holding thus drawing the MMs out of its defenses
making them as naked as their short position. This is war so this slow
accumulation and holding for the long term easily achieves the desired effect
to force MMs to cover and knock off the tactics or bury themselves deeper.
The MMs when caught will especially use every trick and tactic in the book to
get a Bear Raid thus playing on the individual fear of most people. The MMs
feel they have information and position advantages over the investors as long
as the holding of the stock is in weak hands or short term holders. Since they
are OTC BB MMs who believe all OTCBB companies are not worth investing and
management is ineffective regardless what is happening within the company.
Furthermore, MMs know they are in the position to impose a great deal of
influence in OTC BB stocks trading when it suits their needs.
This inherent power of position enables the MMs to move the markets at any
time up or down. As a result, the only way to draw them out of their favorable
position is going long. Now this does not mean just any company but to
effectively nail the MMs, Longs must find the great company on the floor and
accumulate long before the MM tactics and games begin.
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