Plus 500 hits support

CFD broker Plus 500 (£PLUS) shares, which I wrote about in August, have plummeted over 12% this morning, ostensibly on a report that they are not vetting clients on signup, only on withdrawal, which is in breach of FCA anti-money laundering regulations.

The report in in The Times. You can click here, but you might be frustrated by the paywall.

Anyway, the shares hit strong technical support at around 360p and then bounced back from there.

£PLUS hits 360p support

I have been short since 480p (see the earlier article), and still believe that the share could go a lot lower. However, I noticed that volume in this huge drop was completely unlike the 24th June drop, and even less than the 14th July drop. Although the full day's volume is not in, the volume which caused the drop is in, and it is, at the time of writing is only 170k shares, compared to 1.3M on 24th June.

Also I notice that the 14th July drop, was followed the next day by a massive buy volume. The price didn't move straight away, but that day was clearly the kick-start to price recovery (well certainly a B-C move).

Given the events of 15th July, and the 360p support line, I have decided to close my short today for 105p gain. I will be very carefully watching tomorrow's volume, and making a decision based on that. Most of the losses today were in the first few seconds of live trading, but there is a small overnight gap around 420p.

I expect a short-term but very fast retracing rise tomorrow, but I am particularly interested in the volume, to see if the 15th July pattern is repeated. Alternatively, if the share falls below 360p on volume (or for more than a day or two), I will short there.