Phisix: A Remarkable Dump and Pump Session!

Today marks another splendid session. A session filled with manipulations which attempts to PROJECT CONFIDENCE from actions of the local version of the Plunge Protection Team. 

In the US, the Plunge Protection Team PPT represents an ad hoc political body that had emerged out of Executive Order 12631, signed by United States President Ronald Reagan on March 18, 1988. The PPT is formally known as the “The Working Group on Financial Markets (also, President's Working Group on Financial Markets, the Working Group”) according to Wikipedia.org

The PPT has long been suspected of intervening and manipulating the stock markets with the intent to prevent a crash. Yet intent may not always be the objective for interventions.

I have no idea whether the local version represents interventions from purely taxpayer institutions or a collusion of public and private institutions or complicity from a mishmash of private institutions.

What seems evident has been that interventions have been going on with increasing frequency--now almost a daily phenomenon--and intensity!

And such interventions have been designed to push the benchmark higher. And higher stocks would then be rationalized in the political context as 'confidence' from present policies that resulted to G-R-O-W-T-H.

Only a few stocks carry the weight of the Phisix as noted yesterday: 

As of the close of April 17, the market cap weighting of the top 15 issues of the Phisix constitutes a staggering 79.57% of the domestic bellwether!

Meanwhile, the 10 best performers as measured by year to date gains (as of last week) has an accrued market cap share of an astounding 55.23%!

So movements of the 10 best performers or the top 15 biggest market caps determine the direction of the Phisix!

So all it takes to push the index higher is to intervene in the pricing dynamics of select issues from the 15 biggest market caps.

The modus comes in three dimensions.

One is a combination of intraday post lunch break pump which I call the ‘afternoon delight’ (afternoon session pump). Afternoon delight usually culminates with “marking the close”.

The second has been entirely a “marking the close” maneuver. Marking the close, perhaps, has been the cheapest way to intervene. As noted above, this has become a regular or a daily feature. 

The third class of interventions occurs during a global market selloff. 

Index managers would go to work early in the session and resort to “panic buying” of major issues to counter a selloff. The all day panic buying would then result to either a minimal loss or even with gains for the day. I call this the "panic buying day". 

So far there have been only four Panic buying day sessions since October 2014. 

The limited use of “panic buying day” has likely been due to high costs required for such operations.

To proceed to today's remarkable dump and pump.

The Phisix started the day in the red.

However the ‘dump’ intensified and even climaxed going to the last 30 minutes of the session. 

The Phisix plunge crested with a decline of 170 points or 2.13% (2:50 pm)! 

Then the modus went into operations. Index managers pulled another 'afternoon delight' during the last 30 minutes and ended the day with another remarkable ‘marking the close'! 

The marking the close essentially shaved 53.74 points or a whopping about .66% of the pre runoff losses!

At end of the session, the Phisix lost only 1.03%! A fantastic swing from -2.13% to -1.03% in just 40 minutes from a late panic buying episode! 

Index managers went to save the day from a brutal dump!

Index managers worked with big cap issues from four sectors.

Ironically, the property sector provided little bearing for today’s managed pump.

I’ll cite one issue as example: The Phisix’s largest market cap: SM

SM has a share of 9.85% (as of today's close) in terms of market cap weighting in the Phisix basket.

SM was down by a staggering 2.9% just prior to the runoff!

Aside from the above chart, the ‘time and sale’ table reveals of the abrupt erasure of SM’s losses at the last minute. 

"Marking the close" expunged almost ALL of the SM’s losses! SM closed the day with just -.11%! An incredible swing from -2.9% to -.11% in just a flick!

All these serial flagrant market rigging represents what constitutes as “confidence” for the establishment.

(all charts and table from colfinancial)