Can someone explain what is going on here. I have been noticing that when I put a limit order in through Stake, generally to purchase a microcap stock, usually happens in the ones with lower daily trading volumes, that my order is immediately (within microseconds) followed by several copycat orders, most of the time I am first in the cue but on occasions my order has been pushed to second spot. It usually occurs when I am bottom fishing.
For an example I just put a small order in for Volpara Health (VHP) to buy 3754 shares @ $0.665. This was immediately followed by 5 other orders as shown in the screen grab below. Prior to my order going in there were no other orders in the market above $0.66, and the $0.66 order number (7) and volume (14960) didn't change as a result of my actions. So these 5 orders that followed mine are new to the market. Does anyone know what this is, is it just algorithm trading or slow steady accumulation by someone, who is spreading it across multiple orders and trying not to influence the price? I seem to notice it occurring a lot more now that I am using Stake to execute my orders. It seems weird that anyone would be interested in what I am doing so it might just be a coincident but seems odd. Anyone else observed this or similiar?
The sum of these extra orders was almost the same total volume (3754 vs 3704), with the trades spread across the ASX and CXA platforms.