Day trader behind ASIC’s Openmarkets fine boasted of being ‘a sniper’
On January 2, 2020, little-known Latvian-born day trader Philip Tauberman sent the first of more than 2000 suspicious trade orders that would eventually land his stockbroker, Openmarkets, in hot water with the corporate regulator.
Tauberman, who first appeared on the radar of the Australian Securities and Investments Commission three years earlier for $10 million of questionable trades in ASX staples Blackmores and BHP, had a new method.
One of the catalysts for Tauberman to go out on his own as a day trader was after he went broke due to a massive market correction following the 2005 London Bombings. AP
“You’re effectively a sniper,” the 41-year-old told a podcast in May of that year. He was explaining how he waited for big outbreaks of trading volumes driven by investing algorithms to strike and make a profit,
“You are waiting. You’ve got a whole bunch of stocks to watch… and you have to be ready to execute.
“If you watch [algorithms] long enough, you know when they are starting to run out of steam. That might take 20 minutes, it might take two hours, but they all follow a similar pattern when getting to the end of their order.”
Tauberman’s favourite stocks to trade included Telstra. “I am sometimes 20 to 30 per cent of the volume there,” he boasted. He also likes real estate trusts. He watches “probably 10″ stocks that are actively traded.
He starts a session with The Australian Financial Review’s markets newsletter, Before the Bell, “and see what the movements are in terms of overnight”.
Tauberman’s trading between January and March 2021 was behind the record $4.5 million fine ASIC’s market disciplinary panel levied against stockbroker Openmarkets. Those familiar with his trading strategy said he relied on high
Read more on afr.com
