RE: Loads of sells4 Aug 2017 21:52
Hi Bob, the price drop on Tuesday certainly indicated a large sell trade was in the works. During the price drop we had a couple of days when buys exceeded sells by around 4 million shares in total. Then yesterday and today the prices to buy and sell were (almost) identical and I found it impossible to judge the buy / sell ratio but the total number of shares traded in the last 2 days was only 1.3 million so even if they were all sales to the MM's, and I'm sure they weren't, then the MM's were still down 2.7 million.
If there isn't a hidden sale then I reckon the MM's books are now cleared of Trevor Brown's 11 million and they have lost tens of thousands of pounds on the deal. There was no logical reason I could see to have reduced the share price as they have other than them having inside information of bad news.
I'm fairly certain I'm right in saying that no delayed trade, no matter how large, is supposed to be held back more than 3 working days after the day the trade was enacted so we should have seen something by end of today as the price drop started on Tuesday. If a large hidden sell doesn't appear early Monday I will have to assume there never was one to begin with.
Re your idea of book balancing - that's a possibility and it all started on 1st August which, I suppose, might be a significant date. I'm still of a mind to think there's a trade hidden somewhere, at least I hope so as then this price drop would make sense. Without it I can only come to the same conclusion as you, the MM's have been told to balance their books and it's cost them to do it.