Canaccord

This post is dedicated to the traders at Canaccord:

Kenuck SmallCap Trader... is an (non professional) amature standing on-line portal, ...sifting through market noise, charting, and picking the stocks that are developing a following, and blogging about it, We follow Canaccord because they demonstrate the kind of trading you will have to get used to as a player yourself!

Jan 7, 2010, Canaccord came out and dumped about 500,000+ shares relentlessly onto the URC.V bid. I once had a few thousand shares (another story - 10K) not much by comparison, and was trying to sell them, which on the sell order wasn't being executed. I called TD Waterhouse and asked why, and was told the order was being processed in a way that would not upset the market. Huh!

With that thought in mind, it only makes sense if you had a large position that was threatened by bad news not yet published... to unload, you would do it in a way that would not disturb the market, and create panic. I mean, why not dribble it out for as long as you can to get the best price while your dumping the shares. It is self serving, but I can at least understand the motivation. Therefore an act of opposite dimension has a different purpose.

Acting on insider information by professional traders is immoral at the very least. In this case, the type of dumping that occurred here is indicative of insider information (of the bad kind) being acted on, if indeed insider news of a disturbing nature for Uracan was on the near horizon, (that would be the the normal instinctive reaction of watching shareholders - fear). Canaccord really hosed the bid, driving the price down and suppressing it... silently promoting concerns bad news was in the pipeline for the harsh selling... on a larger scale concerns not recorded on SH may have precluded a plunging share price in panic to which it may have been a very lucrative undertaking for privileged parties.

Selling like this in itself it would be unprofessional if traders were acting on "Insider Information" in such a discriminatory way.

Professional traders have a duty to demonstrate fair trading practices, being that they are privy to sensitive information.

That's bad enough...!

Without the implied bad news motivation... it becomes even more sinister in that it resembles manipulation in the worst most blatant form, and to top it off, Canaccord does this as a normal course of business without fear of repercussion from the Securities Commission.

If these parties, who would know by their insider status that in fact there was no bad news on the horizon, would be able to purchase shares for profit at a much lower price, and use the leverage, and same technique in reverse, pumping the price up for profit. They would indeed be allowing themselves to be held accountable for unfair manipulation.

I must make a few conclusions about that behaviour, and that would be the Security Commission is aware, and condones the practice as legal business as usual, or the Security Commission is unaware, or can't be bothered to do anything about it.

Take your pick.

Canaccord has been around a long time pulling this same stunt many times over.

If it isn't downright criminal, then it is at best highly immoral ethics in action that promotes and festers with dishonesty in my opinion. I have read that it is just a way of providing clients with opportunities to purchase shares. Sounds reasonable, if you really feel inclined to be passive, but, if servicing accounts is true, when huge blocks of shares are dumped and the trading house abuses their leverage and financial might... by buying back in power and raising the price to profit both ways, it crosses a line.

We would be prosecuted and fined for the same offense. It is easy to make scapegoats out of private citizens.

GLTA Lostoutwest
Kenuck SmallCap Trader

National Post

Grandich

StockCharts Public Chart List

CBCnews


Please read our Complete Disclosure