lowtrade

[lowtrade]

Here's what I had saved from 2011 and it's about the same rule you quoted. Saying M&Ms can't hind trades, like you posted, then report them after the fact. Humm.

IMO doesn't really matter. Wash trade or VC / market maker manipulation. Seeing these types of trades, still makes me feel there is Smoke before the fire. And that's all that should matter when watching for a darkside play start. Just adds comfort one may occur.

Of the 3 new rules kicking in on Monday 5/9/11 FINRA 6460 is the one to concentrate on. My legal buddies are referring to it as the “new leap frog rule”. MMs now have to show the full size of any orders that are the high bid or low offer. Before they could hide a large buy order by only showing 5,000 shares of it which was and is the minimum for penny stocks. The key concept here is “forced transparency”. From now on if a “whale” shows a bid for 10 million shares of XXX and it is higher than the previous bid then the MM must either reflect it or jump it by a notch to hide it. The “whale” would then need to jump it to get it to be the high bid. Hence the term leap frog.

If an abusive MM with an enormous preexisting naked short position puts in a large offer to scare buyers aware then he has to place it below the former offer and he’s going to have to honor that sale if the “whale” chooses to take him out. The “whales” are going to get pretty ticked off if the MM representing his order fraudulently makes him pay higher because of his antics needing to be performed to hide the large order. This might violate the “best execution rule” (NASD 2320) wherein a broker has a formal “duty” to find the best market to aim an order towards.

“Whales” want to buy size but a crooked MM sitting on a monstrous naked short position with the fear that XXX just might “have the goods” does not want to sell size. He just wants to fraudulently induce selling and dissuade buying. A variety of the “3Ms” (“market maker manipulations”) are going to be rendered moot. As you can well imagine, a crime as obvious as selling nonexistent shares all day long while pretending to be “injecting liquidity” needs to be done in an environment with no transparency. “Leap frogging” is going to look very, very obvious on a time and sales sheet! There is no better disinfectant than the light of day.

http://shockertrades.blogspot.com/2011/05/new-finra-rules-6460-on-may-9-2011.html