How to be careful against manipulation while trading Forex?It all started on the morning of December 20, 2021. The "Up Tick Rule" was implemented for one day in the stock market. The Up Tick Rule is an application that reduces the declines caused by short selling in stocks and is implemented to limit selling pressure.
The implementation method of this rule is that even though the capital market instrument subject to short selling can be realized at a price higher than the last transaction price, the short selling transaction can also be made at the last transaction price level if the last transaction price of the capital market instrument subject to short selling is higher than the previous price.
Thus, with the implementation of this rule, the possibility of the dollar falling is minimized. The dollar is raised up to 18.36 Turkish liras. At 18:15, after the daytime market closed, the manipulation began.
On the evening of December 20, 2021, the Central Bank started selling dollars through public banks at very low exchange rates. The aim was to transfer capital to some of the supporters by selling the Central Bank's dollars for less than 10 Turkish liras, but the dollar only fell to 12.49 Turkish liras. Because an investor who was unaware of this operation bought $1.5 billion at an average rate of 12.50 Turkish liras. Since the Central Bank had exhausted its selling limit for that day, it couldn't sell any more dollars. Thus, the operation remained incomplete.
With the panic that started in the market, BIST presented an announcement for approval at 09:25 on the morning of December 21, 2021. A trap was set for stock market investors to complete the operation. At 09:46 (16 minutes after the opening of the stock exchange), the approval of the announcement was published on KAP.
In this announcement, the limit for selling dollars at a discount of up to 10% was increased to 80%. However, during the 16-minute period before investors learned of this decision, the Central Bank's dollar reserves, which had started selling at 18.22 Turkish liras on the new day, had already been sold down to the level of 3.65 Turkish liras. (Although this level of 3.65 Turkish liras may not be visible on the Tradingview chart, data is available on applications such as Bloomberg Terminal and Matriks.)
The identity of those who had prior knowledge and purchased dollars at almost no cost is unknown. The Central Bank has been robbed, and those who were aware of the operation have made large profits, while others have lost their money and assets. Instead of protecting investors against manipulation, it looks like SPK and BIST have facilitated the setting of traps for them.
The most basic thing we can do to protect ourselves against such manipulations is to be vigilant when buying and selling currencies of countries with low credibility.
