Painting The Tape.

[Mysticforex 13]

I came across this term in a book I am reading ( Currency Wars, James Rickards ).

 

I can pretty much imagine what it means but was wondering if one of our members with a more Institutional backround could shed some light on it ?

[ForexTraderX 10]

It's when large players simultaniously buy and sell at the same time in order to generate a specific appearance of demand or supply or even a specific time and sales print out.

 

An easy example would be an institution that wants the illusion of a bullish breakout about to happen. They may buy blocks of futures contracts at 10+ contracts per trade, but that same institution may also be on the offer with 1 lots...so folks watching time and sales see aggressive large buying going through and assume a big player is buying in anticipation of a breakout.

 

Little do they know that the prints they see are immediately getting sold off 1 lot at a time to the same entity, thus producing a misdirection of sorts.