Quote from edbar:
With the recent news about Goldman running trading software that is raking tens of million$ a year in profits, I'm skeptical of them raising a target on a stock as it could just mean they are ready to dump their holdings, as they draw the buyers in.
Ed
This might come as news to you, but the trading software that Goldman is using to rake in "tens of millions a year in profits" applies to being a
Supplemental Liquidity Provider, frequently called "SLPs".
They are high-volume members incented to add liquidity on the NYSE by way of receiving a rebate of $0.0015 when the SLP posts liquidity in an assigned security that executes against incoming orders. This generates more quoting activity, leading to tighter spreads and greater liquidity at each price level.
Goldman is not the only "SLP".
Furthermore, a member organization cannot act as a "DMM"
( Designated Market Maker ) and SLP in the same security.
Obviously based on the rebate structure and the mutual exclusion, it would make much more sense to trade as a DMM as opposed to an SLP, not in the least since SLPs (at least according to currently available information) are very limited in terms of which securities they can actually trade for supplemental liquidity provision. Quoting Robert Airo, VP of relationship management and sales at NYSE Euronext, from late October 2008:
"Weâre rolling [the SLP pilot program] out in the 500 most active names where we believe incenting SLPs by compensating them to provide liquidity will supplement all of the other initiatives that weâve put in place to build the NYSE book."
The SLP program was developed in the days after the Lehman collapse when market volatility spiked and major questions about liquidity premia emerged, resulting in program roll out on October 29 of 2008.
You can learn more about it here:
http://zerohedge.blogspot.com/2009/05/observations-on-nyse-program-trading.html
Again, this type of automated
liquidity providing ( by Goldman and others ) as SLP's has absolutely
NOTHING to do with Goldman's equity research, as you have previously claimed. To continue to assert such a point is to be quite naive.