CFO
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A new feature was added to the trading system tonight. There have been people in the past that have "worked the system" by entering a series of "Sell" orders for the same holding. By watching the real-time stock price quotes they could then take or cancel orders in this series based on the direction the stock was trading in. Since the system did not prevent more than one sell order from being "queued" for the same holding, a trader could quite potentially enter an order every 1 or two minutes and have an entire series of orders in place, just waiting for the optimal moment to sell.
That loophole has been closed. You can still enter orders. You can still cancel orders. But you can no longer enter multiple sell orders for the same position that would exceed your total holding.
If you have more than one holding of the same stock in your portfolio, it will not affect your ability to sell those holdings. It only checks for multiple sells on the specific holding.
Here is an example of how it will now work. If you have 100 shares of stock XYZ, you can enter a sell order for 50 shares and it will be accepted. You can then enter another SELL order for 50 shares, and it will be accepted. You now have outstanding SELL orders for your entire holding. If you try to enter another SELL order for any amount, it will be rejected.
You could enter a sell order for your entire position of 100 shares. If you do that, then any attempt to place another SELL order for the same holding will be rejected.
A user could still "work the system" even under this new configuration, but it would be a lot harder. Instead of being able to enter a series of orders you would have to enter a single order, wait, cancel, and enter another order. Each time this is done a new 20 minute delay period starts. It would be much more time consuming, but still possible.
Some time back when Ben still owned the site he was monitoring the trade queue for "patterns of cancellation". It is quite obvious when someone uses this technique to try to maximize their profits. During the change in ownership this particular monitoring process was dropped. It will now be reinstated, and users that exhibit pattern cancellation behavior will not be eligible for the monthly winnings.
That is my understanding based on my conversation with JRW earlier this evening. I will leave it to him to confirm the policy and penalties for this sort of behavior.
This change should not impact those that are using the simulator in the expected fashion. |
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