Manipulating stock prices is regarded as a black screen in the stock market, and the specific methods are relatively mysterious.
The "Administrative Punishment Decision Letter" recently issued by the China Securities Regulatory Commission has a considerable proportion of cases of manipulation of the securities market, and some details have been disclosed.
At the same time, reporters from the Securities Times conducted interviews with many market participants, and the "stock price manipulation" hidden behind these illegal acts gradually emerged.
The manipulators who have been fined recently come from Fuzhou, Qingdao, Nanjing and other places, mostly provincial capitals and new first-tier cities, while the "post-80s" are becoming the main force involved in market manipulation and speculation.
Guerrilla warfare and team warfare are important tactics for market manipulators. Violators take advantage of capital and shareholding advantages to build positions, raise funds, and ship goods, and finally achieve a closed loop of speculation.
Generally speaking, the trading volume of the account group involved in the case accounts for a high proportion of the trading volume, and some even exceed 75%.
Some people in the market believe that the recent cases of punishment show the characteristics of "short bank hot money".
Supervision "grows teeth" and strongly cracks down on stock price manipulation.
More listed companies are also building systems to isolate illegal activities such as stock price manipulation and insider trading.
In the future, the path of speculators represented by stock price manipulation will be even more difficult.
guerrilla warfare
Judging from the cases of market manipulation involved in the "Administrative Punishment Decision" disclosed by the China Securities Regulatory Commission recently, there are lawbreakers who conduct "short, flat and fast" manipulations of specific stocks, and some people "change places with one shot."
The typical representative of the former is Li Weiwei, known as the "No. 1 Trader in North China". He manipulated Huijintong for 34 trading days, bought 43.29 million shares in total, with an amount exceeding 2.133 billion yuan, and sold 43.1 million shares in total, with an amount of 2.153 billion yuan. The total actual profit is 20.7 million yuan.
The representative of the latter is Chen Xiao, a "post-80s generation" in Nanjing.
During the year from March 2019 to April 2020, he successively manipulated the prices of 13 stocks including Mugaodi, Shenglong, Zhejiang Xiantong, and Qijing Machinery. The characteristics of changing places with one shot are obvious.
In this model, the time span for committing illegal acts also increases significantly.
Manipulators have their own ideas about the choice of manipulating individual stocks.
Wang Baoyuan manipulates many stocks, and he loves Northeast Company the most.
Within a year, he successively manipulated Jilin Expressway, Dalian Thermal Power, Daqing Huake and many other Northeast stocks.
These northeast companies all have a state-owned background and have always been low-key in the capital market. Their low market value and relatively stable fundamentals should be important reasons for being selected by Wang Baoyuan.
In addition, more than 10 listed companies whose stock prices were manipulated by Chen Xiao are mostly concentrated in Jiangsu and Zhejiang, including Ningbo, Wuxi, Jiaxing and other places, showing their enthusiasm for small-scale private enterprises in East China.
Repeated manipulation of the same stock is also one of the characteristics of recent cases.
For example, Wang Baoyuan conducted two rounds of maneuvering on the Jilin Expressway.
Among them, from February 3 to March 11, 2020, controlled the use of 24 accounts, concentrated capital advantages and continued trading, and realized a profit of 13.02 million yuan; more than two months later, from May 28 to June 15, again Controlling the use of 32 accounts, using various means to influence the trading price and trading volume of Jilin Expressway stock, realized a profit of 2.04 million yuan.
Some manipulators set up a stock pool as a base, and some manipulators unite to manipulate a stock.
In mid-December last year, an administrative penalty decision issued by the China Securities Regulatory Commission included the names of Tang Long and Zhu Wei, both of whom lived in Qingdao. From 2018 to 2019, they jointly manipulated the trading price of Debang Lighting’s stock. , reflecting the characteristics of "collusion".
multi-team melee
The recent cases of fines, from the point of view of the manipulation method, have the characteristics of "scattered appearance but concentrated spirit", and multi-group battles in account groups are common.
Li Weiwei controlled 92 securities accounts to trade Huijintong, Chen Xiao controlled 142 securities accounts from 2019 to 2020, and Wang Baoyuan controlled and used 145 accounts.
Taking Chen Xiao's manipulation of Mu Gaodi as an example, during the nine trading days from April 15 to April 25, 2019, Chen Xiao controlled 54 securities accounts for transactions, and bought 3.17 million shares in total, with a purchase amount of 93 million yuan .
Among them, the purchase market ranked first in 7 trading days, and the bid buying transaction market ranked first in 8 trading days.
In just a few days, Chen Xiao quickly made a profit of over 6 million yuan.
Daqing Huake is one of the underlying stocks that Wang Baoyuan used the most control accounts when manipulating the market in 2020.
At that time, he controlled and used 54 accounts, and used various means to influence the trading price and trading volume of Daqing Huake stock, making a profit of over 79.55 million yuan.
Beijing asset manager Wang Feng (pseudonym) believes that using account groups to trade stocks, on the one hand, is conducive to spreading chips, and on the other hand, it points to evasion of supervision.
"Using other people's accounts to engage in securities transactions and borrowing other people's securities accounts to engage in securities transactions are originally prohibited by law, but they are more common in illegal practice."
A person close to the regulatory department told reporters that it is often difficult to see any connection between these accounts on the surface, and even if the same stock is traded, the superficial connection is not great.
Therefore, regulatory authorities usually use technical means to determine whether there is any relevant IP, MAC and other associations in the securities account during the transaction of the stocks involved in the case.
Such a high-frequency guerrilla warfare requires a relatively large supply of funds.
Judging from the cases investigated by the regulatory agency, in addition to self-owned funds, capital allocation funds are also one of the important sources.
This means that leverage is one of the basis for the implementation of market manipulation.
Controlling multiple accounts to achieve stock trading does not only exist in stock manipulation.
Some related parties of listed companies will also take advantage of information and other advantages to speculate on their own stocks through multiple vests.
Although this trading model has not been characterized as manipulating stock prices for the time being, it has advantages in holding shares and information, and it is easier to achieve short-term arbitrage.
An "Administrative Punishment Decision" disclosed by Hanhe on January 7 this year informed the market of this model.
In the summer of 2015, it was the frenzied period of the A-share bull market.
Qingdao Hanhe Group, the controlling shareholder of Hanhe, controls 20 natural person securities accounts to trade its own stocks.
In this process, the account group first bought the Hanhe shares it had reduced through bulk transactions, and then traded Hanhe shares through the bulk market or the secondary market.
Wang Feng told reporters that this trading model of "buying in bulk transactions and selling in the secondary market" was originally a business covered by some FA and other institutions, and shareholders including large and small non-profit and industrial capital sold part of their holdings to institutions , The institution then chooses an opportunity to sell it from the secondary market, and the industry also calls this kind of intermediary who makes the price difference a capital broker.
However, since then, this model has been transformed for a time. Some companies cover up the entrusted stock speculation in the name of reduction and transfer; some speculation funds purchase shares through bulk trading platforms to lock up the stock price in the later stage.
Judging from the case of Hanhe Co., Ltd., the middle chain was cut off, and the controlling shareholder was replaced with full coverage.
For quite a period of time, Hanhe Group and its affiliates provided funds to the nominal holders of the account group in the name of borrowing. The data investigated by the regulator was as high as 2.374 billion yuan.
After these funds are transferred to the bank account of the nominal holder of the account group, they will be transferred to the account group again under the control of Hanhe Group employees to engage in the securities trading activities involved.
slapstick
Judging from the cases of being punished for market manipulation disclosed by the China Securities Regulatory Commission, continuous trading is an important feature, which can be divided into three stages: "building positions, pulling, and shipping".
In this process, alternative buying methods deserve special attention.
Taking Chen Xiao's manipulation of Mu Gaodi's position building period as an example, the Mu Gaodi account group applied for about 820,000 shares in the continuous bidding stage, and the number of bids for not lower than the first price was close to 540,000 shares, accounting for the number of continuous bidding accounts. The ratio is 65.69%.
At the same time, the transaction volume of the account group should not be lower than that of the one-price bid and buy, accounting for 13.74% of the total transaction volume of continuous auctions in the market.
It is similar to this during the pull-up period. There have been many cases where the number of bids for account groups not lower than the first price accounted for a high proportion of the number of bids for continuous bidding accounts.
This alternative method of buying bids is similar to the methods often used in "pseudo-market value management".
"These pending orders are not for the purpose of transaction, but to meet the needs of the market order. They are declared first and then cancelled." Market participants explained to reporters.
Wang Feng told reporters that "false market value management" is often only one step away from stock price manipulation.
"Manipulators usually sell during the period of building positions, and often buy during the period of shipment. 'Doing T' is the norm. In this process, it is often accompanied by reverse transactions and false declarations. These are all Conventional methods of manipulating stock prices and 'false market value management'," Wang Feng said.
The basis of opening positions and raising positions is to build a shareholding advantage.
In the case of Tang Long and Zhu Wei manipulating the stock price of Debang Lighting disclosed by the regulator in mid-December last year, the buying volume of the account group involved in the case accounted for 75.03% of the market trading volume, and the characteristics of phased control were obvious.
According to Wang Feng's analysis, the so-called "market makers" in the market, no matter institutions or large investors, usually highly control the circulating chips of listed companies in the secondary market, change the supply and demand relationship of stocks, and make the stock price deviate from the investment value.
Judging from the cases of receiving penalties, some manipulators already have the characteristics of "bankers" with short-term hot money.
Shipment is also an important dimension of market attention.
Whether judging from the Fujian Jinsen and other cases previously announced by the China Securities Regulatory Commission, or Liu Jinye’s practice in Nanling Civil Explosions, Zhengchuan Stocks and other individual stocks in the past two years, some market manipulations use the tough method of limit-down shipments. As a result, many individual stocks experienced a "one-word death knife"-style drop limit, which closed the door for small and medium-sized retail investors to sell.
Judging from the recent cases disclosed by the China Securities Regulatory Commission, compared with the "one word broken soul knife" shipping method, there is a gentler trend.
Although during the shipment stage, there will also be deviations in the corresponding underlying stock price from the Shanghai and Shenzhen indexes and industry indexes during the same period, but a large proportion of stocks do not have limit-down shipments.
A sound system for listed companies
From the perspective of more listed companies, they are paying more and more attention to the illegal behavior of manipulating the securities market. One of the major signs is the establishment of safety valves through the setting of various regulations.
These systems include the company's articles of association, investor relationship management system, information disclosure management system, and code of conduct for actual controllers.
On the last trading day before New Year's Day in 2023, Shensangda A clarified the investor relationship management system, and clarified that the company and its directors, supervisors, senior managers and staff carry out investor relationship management work, and there must be no suspected manipulation of the securities market or insider trading. and other violations of laws and regulations.
At the same time, it is clear that companies, research institutions and individuals shall not use research activities to engage in market manipulation, insider trading or other violations of laws and regulations.
On the same day, Huanrui Century and other companies also disclosed the information disclosure management system, clarifying that the company shall not use voluntary information disclosure to engage in market manipulation, insider trading or other violations of laws and regulations; Instructions for insider trading and market manipulation".
In addition, companies such as Zhongyeda have announced the code of conduct for controlling shareholders and actual controllers, clarifying several requirements that the company’s controlling shareholders and actual controllers should abide by. One of them is that they must not use the company’s undisclosed material Do not disclose the company's undisclosed material information by means of disclosure, and shall not engage in illegal activities such as insider trading and market manipulation.
Wang Feng pointed out that there are now more than 5,000 A-share listed companies. As the ballast and vanguard of the Chinese economy, these companies have fully demonstrated their resilience and vitality.
What suits it should be the popularization and deepening of the concept of value investment, so that investors can achieve common growth with high-quality companies. Behind it is the quality of the company, not market-leading, let alone speculation or even illegal manipulation.
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