hotday03@emmyl.com

hotday03@emmyl.com

The OTC Conspiracy - The Final Chapter? Presenting 135 weeks of GME OTC and ATS data, in pictures, including a pre-split / post-split analysis, some intriguing subplots (Citadel and Virtu, Robinhood and Drivewealth, Credit Suisse, UBS and the banks), and some forward-looking statements! I’m not much for long intros or shout outs to all the OG bros

Just a simple ape who likes to rhyme, and keep tabs on all the financial crime

Citadel, Virtu, Jane Street and G1, gonna send this rocket into the Sun

So without further ado, here’s some data, swing back through and thank me lata!

My wife said she would leave with her boyfriend if I make one more graph… We’ve come a long way from FINRA ADF to Missing Bananas, OTC Conspiracy and the Infinite Banana Tree, to today. I’ve learned a lot through this journey and I hope you have too!

OTC and ATS data

OTC trades are internalized retail trades, payment for order flow, odd lots (i.e. I purchase 10 shares through “Insert retail broker”, which gets routed to Citadel, Virtu, G1 Execution (Sus), Jane Street, and doesn’t impact the NBBO.
ATS trades are dark pool trades

Here’s a nice video by Dave on Off-Exchange vs. On-Exchange trading:

https://learn.urvin.finance/content/on-exchange-vs-off-exchange-trading

The Data:

All information is taken directly from FINRA OTC Transparency website:

https://otctransparency.finra.org/otctransparency/OtcIssueData

Please refer to The Cooks Keep Cooking the Books series for additional information and details on Robinhood and Dirvewealth LLC ‘adjusting’ their reported OTC trades 8-12 months after they supposedly occurred:

Volume 1 - Robinhood

Volume 2 - Robinhood does it again

Volume 3 - Robinhood and Drivewealth

Volume 4 - Featuring Drivewealth LLC adding 3 million OTC trades

See some of my previous OTC write-ups for additional context and explanation:

This latest data represents 135 weeks (over 2.5 years). I started with August 2020, which is when RC bought in, but as we’ve all learned, the story starts even earlier.

This data is especially important given the proposed SEC rule changes. Send in your comment letter!

Citadel wants you to do Nothing

Weekly GME OTC Shares traded

This shows the total weekly shares traded OTC by Citadel, Virtu, G1 Execution, Two Sigma, UBS, Drivewealth, and Robinhood (and others) over the counter (OTC), as internalized trades from retail across 135 weeks.

The data ranges from 8/3/2020 - 3/3/2023
The data is delayed by 2 weeks, so we will have the data from Week of 3/6 - 3/10 on Monday (3/27) GME OTC shares 8/3/2020 - 3/3/2023

Weekly OTC Trades

GME OTC trades 8/3/2020 - 3/3/2023

Weekly OTC Shares/Trade

GME OTC shares/trade 8/3/2020 - 3/3/2023

So as not to weigh down this post, please see my previous posts for some in-depth analysis on this nefarious OTC trading activity.

Besides an overall decrease in the OTC trades (which may reflect the change in share price after the split), we see increase in shares/trade has increased, and cyclical increases in volume. We’ll dig deeper into the data further down.

Weekly Range (split-adjusted and including last week)

As you can see, we’ve had a lot of volatile weeks in terms of share price, but last week’s adjusted Range of $43.00 doesn’t really align with the significant increase in volume

SHiTeR Score

If we multiply OTC Shares /* Trades /* Range, we get a value that helps normalize the amount of OTC trading and weekly price volatility. The Range is adjusted for the split (closing price /*4). Helps detect crime

Who is responsible for all these shares and all these trades?

Let’s compare pre-split distribution to post-split distribution for shares:

Here, we can see:

A decrease in OTC market share for Citadel (from around 40% pre-split to 33% post-split)
A slight decrease in market share for Virtu (from around 31% pre-split to 27.5% post-split)
An increase in OTC market share by Jane Street (from 4% pre-split to just under 10% post-split). This is accentuated in the Shares/*Trades (SHiT score), where they have increased from 1% to 6% post-split
A decrease in market share for Two Sigma and UBS (UBS has been completely absent for 24 of the past 25 weeks)
A significant increase in market share for De Minimis Firms (from less than 3% pre-split to almost 9% post-split)
I’ll try to add more later! What are your conclusions?