> Wild conspiracy theories, financial advice with no basis in reality, astroturfing, and mob behavior.
Like convincing the world that 'short ladder attacks' were a thing.
https://money.stackexchange.com/questions/135807/closing-sho...
Like convincing the world that 'short ladder attacks' were a thing.
https://money.stackexchange.com/questions/135807/closing-sho...
While wsb is on the verge of going full Q'Anon, I find it equally curious how people seem to be willing to deny foul play when you have people like Jim Cramer confessing/bragging to it.
Beyond that, the burden of proof is clearly on the "short ladder"-believing crowd, and so far what they have come up with is frankly embarasing.
I have zero problem believing that hedge funds would be more than willing to engage in shady behaviour if it can save them a billion or two, but screaming the nonsensical "SHORT LADDER" every time a highly pumped stock drops is ridiculous.
The fact that retail was restricted to selling and hedge funds were not, further corroborates foul play.
This sounds like the interaction between run-of-the-mill execution algorithms.
Bidding algo is likely a market maker putting out small quotes (100 shares is a standard lot) and adjusting down (up) the price each time the bid (offer) is hit (lifted). Selling algo trying to liquidate a larger block without moving the market. It is hitting the top bid from time to time. If those two are the only market participants talking for a few milliseconds, they'll walk down the price in 100-share increments. Given how volatile GameStop was, I suspect the predatory algorithms, who sniff out this sort of stuff, were offline.
One of the things I'm realizing from all this is there aren't many good, succinct sources on market microstructure. It's complicated. But it's not that complicated. (It's just usually boring.)
The best I can recommend is how I learned it. Start with a respected paper [1]. Trace through the references until you find something you understand. Then work your way forward.
[1] https://www.smallake.kr/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/optliq.pd...
It was not. Only retail that played in a couple of YOLO gamified market brokerages that was restricted.