The judge hearing ASIC's claims of misconduct by Westpac in the bank bill market six years ago has voiced frustration at an apparent void in the prosecution's case."If it [Westpac's rates trading] wasn't perceived to be illegal, I would have expected to see weeks and weeks of examples," Justice Jonathan Beach told counsel for ASIC and the bank on the 29th day of hearings in Melbourne yesterday."And all I have is, really, only two examples from you where this anticipatory conduct of what the rate sets are going to be, whether paid or received in a few days or a couple of weeks, and then trading activity consistent with the anticipation [by the bank's traders] …. I've only, I think, seen two reasonable examples of that."If I took your hypothesis of this obvious arithmetic incentive [to engage in mischief in the bills market], and the perception that people didn't think it was illegal and I test that, I just don't see enough examples of that to indicate that that's a hypothesis that's easily made out by you," Beach queried Peter Collinson, one several counsel for ASIC seeking to wrap up closing arguments in the case this week."Well, the incentive is unanswered and it doesn't require a huge leap in legal reasoning for your Honour to come to the view that there might be other activity out there that hasn't been uncovered by the process of the investigation by ASIC," Collinson responded."The hypothesis is not as simple as you make out, that there has to be a sort of a confluence of circumstances where the resolution of the competing tensions that is in the trader's mind might provide the incentive that you're talking about," Justice Beach responded."You say that that should be an obvious incentive for Mr Roden or Ms Johnston [both senior rates traders at the bank], every trading day when there's a significant paid rate set exposure or received rate set exposure. That's your case, isn't it?" Beach demanded."Yes," Collinson agreed, contending: "It must be right, because whatever you wanted to do on a particular day, you can do the following day, or you can accumulate your ammo or your bullets and do it on the day to favour your rate set exposure …. There's not that many examples.""There's also examples which falsifies your hypothesis," Beach stated."I've got a whole list of days and data … that were instances where it would be contrary to your hypothesis, that is, that Westpac sold when it might have had a significant paid rate set exposure."