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@ troublesome
Probably feels a bit like Beirut in the Voleon office right now.
No disrespect to our friends in Lebanon, wish you all the best.
AIM not going anywhere.
Because the MM seems to have forgotten the part about providing liquidity.
2 mins can't get a quote..
Interesting tender about automating the test unpacking process. Currently it's all done manually, staff handling boxes on benches. They've put out a 3 week research tender to see how they can speed it up.
http://bidstats.uk/tenders/2020/W32/732299274
Full details
https://ted.europa.eu/udl?uri=TED:NOTICE:369074-2020:TEXT:EN:HTML
With the care home trial Queen Mary University were the first to publish that news, then it went into the press release feed and all the small sites picked it up. Took about 3 hours IIRC before Novacyt RNS'd it (or the RNS was published - don't actually know how long it takes an RNS to get processed after filing).
Based on that I think the RNS might come after any news of a tender but honestly, no clue.
Oh nice, well spotted RBM. Tenders are finally getting published!
http://bidstats.uk/tenders/2020/W32/732299286
http://bidstats.uk/tenders/2020/W32/732299285
4.x billion left to go...
If you look around the stocks in the Euro bio tech sector, most are really volatile. It would actually be quite tricky to find one to short at this point. I went around looking for a few tonight and it's pretty scary out there.
So that leaves you with a problem if you're a hedge fund going long in a few risky stocks in this sector, you need to find something to short to hedge the risk.
Novacyt's pretty much perfect unfortunately. It's been really stable for 2 months, and shows technical resistance around 300p. Volume is low which means there isn't much risk of it spiking up and losing you millions some morning.
They have to hedge their risk, it's a typical long/short strategy for a hedge fund and it's just our luck that we're a safe place to go long and short on right now. Chance of losing a lot of cash either way is pretty low.
Looking at past Voleon shorts, they are prepared to leave a short open (though it will change regularly up and down) on a stock for weeks or months. Highest short I saw them go up to on any stock was around 2%, but most under 1%, so I can't see too much more interference from them going forward but if they're going deeper long elsewhere, expect them to have to go deeper short here.
On the plus side, when they close this, we will get a nice boost, and it means NCYT is doing better sentiment wise out there. Market likes it and it's been growing steadily without sales updates, just Voleon is hurting it a bit.
Of course GM can fix this any time he wants with a regular stream of RNS updates, but we might find he's not prepare to do that until closer to September, if you believe the theory he wants the sp to be highest closest to his bonus.
Worst case scenario I'd say is we wait for a couple of weeks until strong news starts rolling in.
Best case, tomorrow morning we get tender news or something similarly spectacular.
I think it was Voleon. They've increased short twice recently from 0.75 to 0.82 and again yesterday to 0.93%
https://bdif.amf-france.org/en_US/Fiche-BDIF?xtcr=1&isSearch=true&docId=476596E0202_2020E695674&lastSearchPage=https%3A%2F%2Fbdif.amf-france.org%2FmagnoliaPublic%2Famf%2Fen_US%2FResultat-de-recherche-BDIF%3FformId%3DBDIF%26DOC_TYPE%3DBDIF%26LANGUAGE%3Den%26subFormId%3Ddpcn%26BDIF_TYPE_INFORMATION%3DBDIF_TYPE_INFORMATION_DPCN%26TEXT%3D%26BDIF_RAISON_SOCIALE%3DNOVACYT%26bdifJetonSociete%3DRS00005391%26REFERENCE%3D%26DATE_PUBLICATION%3D%26DATE_OBSOLESCENCE%3D%26valid_form%3DStart%2Bsearch%26isSearch%3Dtrue&xtmc=Notification-of-net-short-positions-NOVACYT
They're digging in, trying to suppress the share price and deter buyers.
I'm seeing the same at Trendz
20 day: 285p
50 day: 288p
100 day: 294p
We're under all 3 right now, well like Trendz says, basically just half a penny or so under the 20 day. Technicals look good.
Yes Novacyt is a lot more resilient now to 'negative' news days. We also have a ton of borrowed shares that need to be bought back, so current share price is into the 300s effectively.
Nice!
Too much support for Novacyt now, market knows it's a matured company with products on market and sales coming in:
See how easily a weaker stock does on the slightest whiff of competition:
https://ibb.co/pfBjhPc
What's better than an unproven 90 minute test with doctors complaining about it?
A rapid 60 minute saliva test from a company with NHS and WHO approvals.
We didn't get any selloff this morning. Just the usual trading pattern. Pretty uneventful this morning, though I was expecting some repercussion.
Avacta got a sell off though. All covid stocks got a bit of a kicking this morning, most 4 to 9% down. Novacyt held nicely. Would still expect a few % down later as the MM does their daily sweep.
Hit us with some news GM, that would be a nice start to the week!
@ Brent
Cheers and honestly no worries about the other day, my tone was all wrong too, like a petulant teen haha. And you weren't wrong either about the interpretation, I was pushing it there for sure.
Going to be a bit of a nail biter this week, on Monday we'll see if Voleon dug in even further from last Friday. Bramley's find has a ton of properly rampy material in it too and Primer will tweet that out on Monday, hopefully it'll get some market penetration and reassure holders, though not sure how much reach they have.
Biggest win this week would maybe be Collinson getting their way with airport testing, and NCYT are revealed as the provider. Tender would be big too, though Collinson would maybe even be a bigger contract over the long term.
Worst case scenario, volume stays low, little news, short increases, MM shakes the stock a few times and frustrates everyone. Think we could survive a really bad week of that and stay over 280p by end of week anyway though.
Oh and Usain, was gonna say, pretty crappy weekend for posters who were expecting to celebrate Eid. Bit like cancelling Christmas on the 24th December. Hope those posters are still finding a cheeky way to get together ;)
Haven't even had a chance to check Shaun's link yet, looking forward to some good news and info though!
Gonna crack open a beer too, hope you guys are doing the same. No worries, this will re-rate to to the mid 300s then 400s soon, and this short just makes it more interesting!
Graham Mullis has kindly replied now on a Saturday so he has our thanks!
Current ownership is here:
https://novacyt.com/aim-rule-26/#aim-securities
And he added, " we are not aware of any large shareholders who might be looking to sell off, equally we have not been informed of anyone building a position which triggers a notification."
So that's some reassurance that Voleon aren't counting on some large institution selling off. This is purely a technical play trying to take advantage of the currently low volume and hurt sentiment.
Personal take, they're US-centric and haven't got their ear to the ground as well as we have. Volume will increase with a news rich period and sales update and will catch them out. Good news is share price technically is actually higher than we are seeing (as they hold borrowed shares). They've killed off sentiment a bit too and momentum trades, which also all help boost interest and share price. Fair enough, GJ Voleon, let's see who wins the next round. Share price has increased since they opened shorts, so it already looks like they're calling it wrong.
Novacyt is performing a better than the charts show then, but the battle isn't won. We need to maintain positive sentiment and increase volume. Novacyt has done their part in the lab and for the world, but AIM is another game. We can chip in by spreading the positivity at least until Voleon 'blink first' as one of our regular posters likes to say.
Oh sorry number 5.
5 is Voleon are long on Novacyt, and have also went a bit short on it to hedge the risk. I asked some guys and they said no, not likely for a few reasons. But the guys I asked aren't hedge fund guys so.. I want to know more on this.
So, I was looking at that last night and wasn't sure which way I thought it had played out. Could be a combination too right - technical weakness and they think either a large seller is due to off load in the 300s, or maybe just a ton of profit takes or guys trapped in the 300s for months decide to sell off too.
Only way to decide is to find out who exactly owns Novacyt - we don't get TR1's don't forget, like other AIM stocks which are purely based in the UK and governed by FCA rules.
I emailed Graham really late yesterday night to see if he can point us in the right direction on Novacyt's ownership. If we can look inside, see who has been increasing positions, maybe we too can work out of a sell off is likely any time soon.
I have my own hunch here, but again, it's not worth much without getting that info and checking every angle first.
GM does reply at weekends sometimes, so you never know. I also gave him a head's up on why I wanted that info. I'm sure he was aware of the short anyway.
Hmm alright.
Was hoping not to talk too much about Voleon here as shorts scare off a lot of investors but I guess the cat's out of the bag now.
I was worried about the short and spent a few hours trying to work out what they found.
So there's 4 or 5 possibilities.
1 ---------------
You need 3 confirmations in trading to confirm a theory in trading (like a resistance point being tested), and we had 3 tests around 300p in the past month.
305 - 6th July
310 - 13th July
305 - 22nd July
That looked like a key point of resistance for Novacyt and together with decreasing volume in an uptrending stock trading theory considers the stock as weak and susceptible for a temporary pullback.
Voleon open their short the day after the 3rd confirmation - 23rd July. That date is key because Voleon can see that even with a strong RNS about a health body trial and a new rapid test which a high volume stock would have gapped up on, Novacyt instead struggled to break the resistance point of 305 that day.
Was looking good for Voleon, market sentiment may be dying further as it looks hard to get any sort of gains with the low volume, except that the next week on the 27th Novacyt release another RNS about a slew of new products. Volume begins to increase. Investors take interest, momentum and swing traders jump in too. The volume keeps coming for a few days and Voleon try to suppress it by shorting further to keep the price and momentum down. Hence they now ended up with 0.75%
The situation now is basically one of volume. If volume decreases again, and they increase the short, or if they can get more shorters to join in, then they may be able to scare off recent investors and traders who bought in around the 300p and get a temporary pullback.
I say temporary as sentiment is positive and a full on bear raid now is too unlikely. The stock has too many sticky longs and isn't being traded heavily any longer. If Novacyt puts out a steady flow of positive news over the next week or two, Voleon will have to make a difficult call. They can juts leave it open and hope that the share price eventually falls below around 300p which is what their average likely is right now. If they quit and buy back the share price will spike and a bunch of momentum traders will jump in, screwing them even harder. The losses could be huge.
That's theory 1. They've basically seen the technical, not fundamental weakness.
2 & 3 -----------
Word limit so will keep the rest short. They either have a tip off of a large fund is selling off soon. Or, they can predict that a large fund will sell off soon - someone who bought steadily since 200p, and the share price has now grown so large that they have to sell off (this is standard practise, funds can only hold a certain % of any stock in a portfolio).
4 --------
They're betting on a vaccine killing testing stocks and have picked a highly priced stock with low volume. This is unlikely (only retail trader
Yep, come on Collinson, and make it Novacyt's PCR test!