A trader convicted of fiddling financial markets has had his jail term reduced.

An Australian trader saw his prison sentence reduced by six months by the Court of Criminal Appeal of Sydney following a sentencing over market manipulation. 

Nigel Derek Heath had been sentenced to two years of prison by a District Court for a market manipulation offence and 18 months for matched trading offence last September. He had pleaded guilty to both charges.

He was to be released after nine months on a recognisance release following a A$10,000 ($7,138) self-surety payment and under condition of good behaviour for 18 months, according to a statement yesterday from the Australian Securities & Investments Commission.   

The Court of Criminal Appeal upheld his matched trading sentence but cut his market manipulation sentence to 18 months. Heath was released on 25 February after serving five months in prison.

The charges brought against Heath relate to trades in shares and contracts for difference he conducted between February 2012 and October 2013. During that time, he traded in four resource companies through nine separate share trading and CFD trading accounts.

The ASIC statement did not specify whether Heath was an employee of a firm at the time of the offences or was trading on his own account.

As a result of 138 transactions carried out by Heath between February 2012 and August 2013, one of the resource companies, Petsec Energy, saw the price of its shares increase by between 4 and 11.5 per cent on the Australian Stock Exchange. The value of Heath's shares in PSA increased by between $15,878 and $46,928. 

Heath also engaged in 30 simultaneous buy and sell transactions of shares and CFDs involving PSA, Leyshon Resources, Malagasy Minerals and Orca Energy. Between July 2012 and October 2013. These “matched trades” raised the price of the shares by between 3.1 and 6.9 per cent.

This was not the first sentence for this type of offence carried out by an Australian District Court. In 2014, Kristoffer John Watts, was sentenced in the Brisbane District Court to a term of two years' imprisonment. Having pleaded guilty to three counts of market manipulation involving trading in direct market access CFDs, Watts served only three months of his sentence. 

Last week, this news service examined how ASIC has cracked down on poor financial advice and wrongdoing in Australia’s wealth management industry, which for years has been bedeviled by misconduct. For more on this article, click here.