5 ms·

> Wild conspiracy theories, financial advice with no basis in reality, astroturfing, and mob behavior. Like convincing the world that 'short ladder attacks' we

• yomly 6y ago
  I'm not really convinced a low traffic SE article proves the opposite however. 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.
  • tedunangst 6y ago
    Does shady stuff happen? Yes. But the short ladder attack is a dumb idea promulgated by people who don't know how things work, and the proof it's happening, fractional prices, is even more spectacularly stupid. This is "how can there be more votes than voters" levels of crazy.
  • simias 6y ago
    Search for "short ladder" online, all the results I can find are literally days old, many from reddit itself. 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.
• PartiallyTyped 6y ago
  The observation was that during the duration of restricted trading and therefore reduced momentum, there had been sequences of trades with batches of 100 shares sold at continuously smaller values with very little difference between one batch and the next and the difference was in 3rd and 4th decimals. The fact that retail was restricted to selling and hedge funds were not, further corroborates foul play.
  • JumpCrisscross 6y ago
    > there had been sequences of trades with batches of 100 shares sold at continuously smaller values with very little difference between one batch and the next and the difference was in 3rd and 4th decimals 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.
    • PartiallyTyped 6y ago
      Thank you for elaborating. Do you have any links that further elaborate or perhaps suggestions for papers/books in algo trading?
      • JumpCrisscross 6y ago
        > Do you have any links that further elaborate or perhaps suggestions for papers/books in algo trading? 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.pdf https://www.smallake.kr/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/optliq.pd...
  • notyourday 6y ago
    > The fact that retail was restricted to selling and hedge funds were not, further corroborates foul play. It was not. Only retail that played in a couple of YOLO gamified market brokerages that was restricted.