Moscow Exchange turned to the players and asked them to pay attention to the volatility of some instruments. And she reminded that decisions should be made carefully, and information should be used only from official sources or from professional players.
It is easy to guess what is behind this message. On October 8 alone, the shares of the Krasny Oktyabr confectionery factory grew by almost 40%. And since the beginning of February – almost five times. And the words about verified information are a clear reminder that you should not focus on social networks when buying such shares.
Because of what the shares of the chocolate factory so skyrocketed, of course, it is not known exactly. But it often happens like this: in some telegram channels, they begin to call for buying some papers, gullible readers begin to buy shares, someone makes money on it, and then everything drops sharply. The model was tested in the United States on the shares of GameStop, which soared by thousands of percent. The opinion of portfolio manager Alexander Krapivko:
“It’s always easier to disperse some low-liquid chip, for which you need very little money, using the telegram channel. Why invent something when you can use a model proven in 2021 in the US? It is much easier to disperse a company of the second or third echelons and then dump it than a blue chip. Proving this is both easy and difficult. Therefore, some traders probably want to take advantage of this. Adopting foreign experience.
But, perhaps, in our situation, the papers were dispersed not by those Robin Hoods who dream of depriving the rich of money or who want to pretend that they have such a goal. It is worth looking at the trading volumes of Krasny Oktyabr shares. At the end of January, there were several million rubles a day. In February – more than a billion rubles. At the same time, although the factory is large, with a revenue of 13 billion rubles in 2021, it is unlikely that such demand could appear for its shares for objective reasons. And there is an assumption that large players are now acting for some purpose. Evgeny Kogan, an investment banker and author of the Bitkogan telegram channel, continues:
“These are not Telegram channels. In my opinion, some big players are playing. How can this be understood? The fact is that when our newly-minted Robin Hoods come, usually these are not so big turnovers, these are small investors. Usually this is a lot of activity in social networks, constant mentions of different companies. It doesn’t exist now. Therefore, I can say with 70-80% certainty that it is most likely played by some big players. Judging by the volume of trading, these are clearly not orphan boys from the gateway. These are some large financial institutions.”
The goals of dispersal of shares of the second and third echelons may be different. For example, this happens before the sale of the company. And then it is already market manipulation, the use of insider information. This is fraught with a criminal article. But how such cases are going in Russia can be judged by a recent verdict. For illegal operations that led to losses of 47 million rubles, two brokers were given suspended sentences and fined 40 thousand rubles each.
Or someone, having no insider information, uses social networks to speed up stocks. And ordinary investors suffer, who, having read telegram channels, urgently buy something. This already happened in 2021, when, following the example of the United States in the Russian Federation, some communities began to encourage users to buy any shares. Then the Central Bank intervened, and the blocking of traders involved in the acceleration of shares began. By the way, at that time the papers of Krasny Oktyabr also grew speculatively. And then, what is important not to forget, they collapsed.