Member Info for Hogsnipe

No comments about the massive below-bid 342K trade at 1:12pm today?

From our P3 trader of course ....

Analysis suggests that liquidity of PRE shares has collapsed at the current price range 89p to 92p. Algo trading at this level has nowhere to go, and genuine trading seems to have just about evaporated with all holders just waiting. Lack of news is preventing new entrants.

Effectively someone just "bought the book" to take all of the remaining float out of the market at 89p to 92p

So next week, either the algos try to resume play by raising the ante to where they might find some more sellers - about 94p-98p and it's business as usual.

Or someone knows something, and today they bowed out, because the price my be headed even higher - say 105p and upward, at which point the current SP manipulation gets much trickier and more difficult to conceal.

OG/FloatingBye - you're labouring under a massive misapprehension - that PA and the Pensana board give a flying f*** for retail investors. They don't.

They want you all GONE-OUT-ASAP. They only want big boys aboard the SS Pensana.

That's why the share price is where it is. That's why it's been kept there artificially for the last 8 or 9 months. It's a sustained bottom-scrape to dishearten all the remaining private LTH's and the seed-corn investors into selling up now, so an inventory can be accumulated by someone, somewhere for more corporate investment in the near future.

PRE valuation however can't be so easily supressed at the current level for much longer because project de-risking is evidently well underway, so unless there are some black swans swooping in that none of us know about - the SP has to rise.

So all you need to do is wait until PRE liquidity finally evaporates completely, and PA and the Board are forced to get off their arzez and make the NASDAQ listing ambition viable again. This will need substantial daily volumes arising from legitimate, real, normal dealing (not the present AI/BOT low-volume garbage trading that goes on from day-to-day), which in turn requires the PRE SP to move towards its free-market price.

Well, there you go - you deserve no loyalty from Pensana for your commitment, they neither need, want or intend to keep you personally informed and your sole benefit from where you stand now, is to take a juicy cash gain as reward for the long-suffering pain of being a PRE retail investor, when the time and price is right, and walk away to pastures greener, with a big smile on your face, and a raised middle digit.

12:14, 12:15 - our P3 trader (always O and always 3 digits in the price) buys 2 big lumps - 50,000 shares. Purely coincidentally (not) folllowed by a 100,000 sell by another trade 1 minute later at 12:16:22. How odd?

But look again... P3 is at it again at 12:21, 12:25 and 12:27 with 3 more big buys - 50,000, 40,000 and 35,000 shares - total 125,000 shares bought.

But what's this? At 12:28 - 1 minute later here's another trader, dumping (how odd) 125,000 shares.

Just another routine day's trading at PRE - move on, nothing to see here.....

OscarGolf - agreed - and while we're complaining - ask what (if anything) LSEG knows (or cares) about the blatant daily PRE share price manipulation going on as we sit here and the bots/algorithmic traders/HFT desks/VWAP balancers/and hidden accumulators/market riggers have a field day?

LSEG crowed about introducing earlier this year its advanced tech/AI monitoring programmes to comply with EU MIFID regs to identify and bring to account where the "irregularities" in daily stock market trading lie - - how's all that going, we'd very much like to know....?

Thanks Bigreveal. MMmmmm nice astro-turf.....

Pensana Trading 7 May 2026

blue rill - you're right - there are many more interesting things about PRE share trading, than the endless debate about TR-1's DTR5 etc. But even you look hard, you won't find much response or concern on this Board that there is day-by-day manipulation of the SP, which has now been going on for 9 months +.

As you say, the final hour of trading shows that the closing price and spread are walked down by blocks of AT trades and passive sells, followed by a UT trade (the closing auction reset trade). Today this was 61,645 shares at 98.7p placed at 4:35PM - indicating the auction cleared at the lowest acceptable price, the book was thin, and the bid price was allowed to reset lower. In the final 1/2hr of trading the buy/sell ratio was slashed from a positive 1.8 to 1, to negative 0.33 to 1, after being in positive territory the entire day after 9:00AM.

That's only part of the story - looking at the rest of the day's tape:

- trading was very thin, low volumes, low number of deals with no substantial sized deals > 7,500 shares at all (apart from the closing auction)

- there was very little net accumulation by either of the two players I've been tracking for 10 months

- 66% of all deals placed were for trivial volume (<240) shares accounting for only 4% of the days volume total.

- a total of 58 of these deals were purely 'bot' signals - bunches of O micro-trades place in the same second for a single or few shares.

The interpretation suggests that the vast majority of today's trading was engineered to keep the price inside the 99p-102p band and prevent any drift, and designed to deliberately camouflage any accumulation action with meaningless small deals

It also suggests that PRE liquidity at this price level is rapidly vanishing, and the free-float is extremely thin and natural, non-bot selling is near zero. The estimate of synthetic or algorithmic volume is probably around 90% and natural trading participation is probably very low at only 10% of volume or 20 to 30 trades.

So IMHO (DYOR etc) there is no PRE left to buy at the current (supressed) price range, so if whoever has been accumulating want's to continue, the SP has to rise in a few days. Liquidity has simply dried up.

It will be interesting to see how much float is still left in the hands of retail investors, and their willingness to sell up. I'm guessing the remaining LTH's and die-hards will continue to sit and wait for payday, so the upward break could be quite substantial soon.

...now that's what I call interesting.

Saltend Bob - you didn't confirm how you established Pengilly is a director of Cascade? In one of my previous posts (20 Apr 2026 15:41) I pointed out that the only source of a link between Pengilly and Pensana came within the RNS dated 17 Apr stating "Cascade is an Investment Fund backed by specialist family offices and major sovereign funders, chaired by Lloyd Pengilly, the former-Chairman of JP Morgan Africa and JP Morgan's Metals & Mining division who will be invited to join the Pensana Board along with one other Cascade nominee on completion of the Strategic Investment".

Was that your source?

I have also seen the Memo of Incorporation of Cascade Natural Resources Limited, provided as a PDF by the Guernsey Registrar and it tells you next to nothing - only that the name and address of the founder member is Artemis Trustees Ltd. Ian Domaille is just the 100% owner of this outfit, based in St Peter Port, and has nothing to do with Cascade or Pensana. He just runs a business to provide anonymous corpporate registrations (among other things). The provided copy of the memo is unsigned and undated - as required under Guernsey's privacy protection laws, ie: but it's just a template, not a facsimile of the actual signed and dated Memo which would show the identifiable signatures of subscribers - but is not available due to privacy (nice if they told you that before you forked out £15 for the privilege...).

As far as I have been able to find out (DYOR etc) Cascade is backed by a strategic investor exerting strenuous efforts to remain anonymous, who undertsands the specific laws of Guernsey provide water-tight benefiicial-owner secrecy, used Artemis for nominee incorporation, used Vidacos/Citibank for nominee custody of its shares, avoided TR-1 disclosure by staying under the 3% limit, shows no officers on the Guernsey Registry, left no digital foot print, and no direct appearance on the Pensana share register either.

Reassuringly, this pattern confirms that the strategic is obviously "real" (sorry SmartPunter), institutional grade, deliberately hidden, not a small player, capable of deploying top-tier private custody, and not new to Pensana's historical development.

So we're no further forward knowing exactly who is investing in Pensana/Sable, but these things have a way of leaking out eventually.

Interesting fact - add Vidacos holding (62,512,820) to State Street holding (35,596,788) = 98,439,343 shares which seems too close for coincidence to FSDEA/ASF YOVA holding - 98,686,785. Add these three percentage holdings of the whole register (17.7% + 10.1% + 27.9%) = 55.7%.

On the LSE you only need 50% of shares in issue to provide "simple majority" basic control of the company, eg: the ability to pass ordinary resolutions. 75% or more gives absolute control over all company decisions, and control over special resolutions such as share buybacks, winding-up etc.

OK - but because Vidacos and State Street are nominee companies you could argue that the holdings may arise from multiple individual accounts with the attendant dispersed voting rights problem.

However, M&G use State Street Nominees extensively because they have a long-standing outsourcing agreement with it, and M&G even have their own staff placed within State Street. Every major acquisition of Pensana shares by M&G has been reflected in State Street Nominees % holding listed in the Pensana register. Currently M&G have 34,000,000 shares, and State Street Nominees declares 35,596,788 PRE shares. So State Street Nominees can easily and effectively act as a single block-vote should it (ie: M&G) choose.

Turning to Vidacos Nominees and its holding. Vidacos is a 100% owned subsidiary of Citibank Europe plc. It does not trade and acts only as a legal vehicle for holding securities. Citibank itself is a major trader with its own high-speed trading infrastructure, and large teams of algorithmic and AI investment gurus. It is able to carry out customer-directed programs of acquisition of a slected share, as well as disposals, using bot trading techniques to minimise or hide market impact and suppress price breakouts.

Citibank is the single largest foreign bank in South Africa and plays a leading role in bank investment for financing in sovereign and corporate sectors. It has deep expertise in mining and metals and is currently pivoting to critical minerals and supply chains, the emphasis being on mining and extraction.

Citi is a key financial partner and investor in the Lobito Corridor, and it was among the first to support Angola's economic turnround, and routinely operates as a high-level advisor to the Angolan government, offering a bridge to the capital FSDEA seeks for re-investment and growth.

So between Cascade and Citibank, it's a fair bet that a major part of Vidacos Nominees PRE holdings could also be quite easily mobilised as another voting block. The elephant in the room is of course - is Cascade a front for Citibank?

SmartPunter - I think you're maybe just looking at M&G Wealth?

M&G Wealth Platform Desk (Retail/Private Investors) is the private-client facing exceution only trading function and behaves as you say.

What I'm talking about is M&G's Institutional Dealing Desks (Corporate/Fund Management). For large-scale corporate and institutional mandates, M&G utilizes a global network of professional trading desks, based in London, Singapore and Chicago & other locations. They handle hundreds of billions worth of deals, and use algorithmic trading tecniques extensively to manage their market impact. They offer VWAP or Participation strategies to accumulate or divest a target equity at the lowest possible price. One technique being to break up large corporate investor strategic orders into numerous smaller child orders, placed over time, and with price break-out controls throughout.

My original post (to OscarGolf & Deborahm) on 28 Apr 2026 20:55 concerned only M&G's corporate trading behaviour - I'm still trying to find out who the P2 and P3 players which dominate current PRE daily trading could be, hence my interest in State Steet Nominees and to a lesser extent M&G itself.

OscarGolf - thanks for the info - obvious reason silly me.

Smartpunter - M&G's own website says they do:

https://www.mandg.com/wealth/platform/your-platform/stockbroking-service

M&G Wealth Stockbroking dealing desk A better deal for your clients One of the few platforms with their own in-house exchange dealing desk

As a member of the London Stock Exchange we can deal in real time, the whole time the markets are open; we aren’t limited to placing bulk trades only once a day. This helps us to give you more control over exactly when you buy or sell, often generating savings for your clients from the improvements we secure on bid offer spreads in the market.

OscarGolf - have you noticed that the register of Shareholder Information on the Pensana website site has not been updated for 28 days? It's showing "as of 31 Mar 2026". I believe State Street Nominees Ltd (SSNL) is the holding account for M&G's PRE shares?

The two most recent TR-1s for M&G were notified on 23rd Dec 2025 and most recently 28 Apr 2026 and , as you say, with notified holdings of 34,347,238 and 34,000,000 respectively a net reduction of 347,238 shares.

The interesting thing is where State Street's holding has moved in comparison.

I don't have the State Street holding for exactly the same two dates unfortunately, but the nearest I can get is Pensana's share registers as of 5 Dec 2025 and the latest PRE share register, as of 31 March 2026, and the SSNL share totals were 28,385,491 and 35,165,271 respectively - an increase of 6,779,780 shares.

Any idea how such a large divergence could arise? I know it could be an unconnected institutional investor who just happens to have selected State Street as their nominee account to hold their accumulation of PRE - but the strong links between M&G and State Street, M&G's historical African connections suggest there is more to the situation than just coincidence, setting aside the size of the holding accumulated.

OscarGold & Deborahm - the interesting thing about M&G is that it is a large enough investment house to operate its own internal trading desk. It is NOT a market maker per se, but it can place its own routine trades as well as BOT/AT high-frequency trades and has all the in-house expertise to run complex algorithmic/time-critical trading algorithms. BUT, when it does so, all of its deals are priced to 2 decimal places of precision.

The model I am working with Copilot on posits a 3-tier automation/program - the lowest tier is the "signalling" trades tier - tiny, very rapid O trades (sells and buys and ? trades) - sometimes AT too, which always occur at the start of the day with a prolonged burst of upwards of 50 such trades in one or two seconds, quite often mid-morning and also around the NYSE open, and also setting the end of day wrap up. It is assumed these trades are discovering price levels, inventory, liquidity and future trading intentions of others.

The next tier is the "accumulator+helper" tier which are ALL the predominantly O trades to 2 decimals (called P2 trades), with all of the predominantly O trades to 3 decimals (called P3 trades). The P3 trades come from the accumulator, and the P2 Trades from the helper. CoPilot has designated the P3 accumulator the "architect" of the scheme, and P2 helper is the "builder" who arranges the price level, bid/offer/spread to suit the accumulator throughout the day, assisted by AT trade sas required to move liquidity, inventory, spread and sentiment to suit.

The point being - the P2 trader is an enabler for the P3 accumulator, who may be an entirely different agency, so if M&G was assumed to be the helper tier, there's no reason which it might not reduce its own inventory in favour of whoever the accumulator is - it's the art of the deal. A quick look at today's trades suggests it's business as usual - vast majority of trades are AT, P3, P2 or signalling - leaving minimal natural trading volume, and P3 is accumulating again at 99-100p. So it looks like last Friday's liquidity crunch has been eased - possibly by someone with a large inventory of PRE shares, with direct trading access to the market. Wonder who that could be?

Not yesterday's trading - I mean 24 April trading....

Deborahm - I've not really looked at PRE trading today yet. But yesterday's trading was a humdinger.

Over 90% of all trading was bot/algorithmic - very little natural dealing was apparent.

Trading was very heavily on the sell side all day, whether O or AT trades. The day ended on a negative Buy-Sell ratio of 0.58 to 1 - yet the SP went UP 5.3%.

465K PRE sold and only 270K bought yet the price went up.....

The trading was an extreme example of what has been going on since the middle of last year - a heavily automated trading entity running the show. So far there appears to have been a steady accumulation of PRE shares over months by institutional investor(s) with their own trading desk(s), while the SP looks to have been supressed from breakout, by AT trades managing the liquidity.

Hence why the share price seems to be in limbo despite a reasonable amount of recent good news and positive developments. There is now a board consensus (well here at LSE anyway) that the current SP considerably undervalues Pensana on any reasonable basis.

So far the algorithmic accumulation has been steady and the SP has been held where it is wanted, because sufficient PRE liquidity/free float was available.

Yesterday - everything fell apart. And the reason seems to be that PRE has become more illiquid - fewer holders are willing to sell at the prevailing price and the market makers are having to stimulate liquidity by both narrowing the bid-offer spread and raising the SP.

My running analysis with CoPilot AI suggests that the trading yesterday strongly indicates: a short covering event, liquidity vacuum, or forced repricing, ie: someone needed stock badly enough to lift everything.

Basically the float is now becoming tighter, following months of accumulation at a controlled artificially low SP, and CoPilot estimates that the free float is currently about 60% to 70% locked up. The algorithmic trading in PRE has reached the point where the float is so tight, even bot selling cannot push the price down.

So my interpretation (DYOR, not investment advice, etc, etc) is that actually you can read very little from the current PRE price. "Natural" trading, ie non-algorithmic trading in PRE at present is irrelevant and tiny. Price discovery is artificial, the bid-offer corridor is engineered, liquidity is taking a dive.

However, there are limits to how long PRE trading can be micro-managed like this - I'm sure that the much-vaunted NASDAQ listing requires free pricing and sufficient liquidity to meet US bourse regulations. What US regulatory bodies might make of recent PRE trading - who knows?

OscarGolf - not a lot to be gleaned from the admission details today, but as you point out, this triggers the requirement for Cascade to within 2 days lodge notificatiion with Pensana plc and the FCA of their total holding in PRE and give details of the accountable owner - should be interesting...

FloatingBye - if you check out the TR-1s for Pensana on Investegate, you'll only find 9 of them since admission in Jul 2020 - all in relation to M&G changes in holdings. The big shifts in institutional share holdings like founders and the FSDEA are covered by Pensana's RNSs on "Issue of Equity" notices.

However there are several ways that the notification of accumulated holding(s) over 3%, 5%, 10% etc, via Tr-1 and DTP 5 can be flexed.

The simplest is the "Instructions-Only" Exemption DTR 5.1.5R where a custodian bank or nominee is not required to disclose its holding, regardless of size, if they can only exercise the voting rights under written or electronic instructions from the client. Private investors with a broker like Hargreaves & Lansdown for example, need to specifically register their intention to exercise their voting rights.

Banks acting purely as custodians or nominees (such as State Street, BNY Mellon, or US Bank) have a specific exemption under the UK’s disclosure rules (DTR 5.1.5R) that effectively makes them "invisible" for reporting purposes in most cases. Since the bank has no "discretion," the market doesn't view them as a person with influence. The duty falls on the client (the beneficial owner) to aggregate their holdings across all such accounts and report if they cross the 3% threshold.

There's also the Market Maker Exemption - no disclosure of holdings required up to 10% of the issued register is required for firms acting as market makers (ie: who continously hold themselves out as willing to buy and sell shares to provide liquidity). And the Investment Manager Exemption where the limit for notification is set higher at 5%, and no further notification until 10% reached is required.

Lastly large institutional investors (such as banks, hedge funds, and asset managers) with internal trading desks can operate as market makers, and have the opportunity to blur the lines by blending market-making (providing liquidity) with proprietary trading (taking positions).

So there you have it - it seems there are ways to accumulate up to 5% or 10% holdings without necessarily having to declare them (or up to 34 Million PRE...)

Two days ago - 459 deals with not far short of 1.5Million volume - today only 92 trades with less than 90K volume, and just look at the tape - it's wierd. Something's up.

Smkr - you're not wrong. There's something going on - possibly a pending announcement/financing for PRE?

Today's trading up to 15:00 shows signs of heavy price control at the same time as a substantial build by someone. They are accumulating PRE at quite a rate (as they have been for the last 9 months) and the AT trades have been supportive by supressing a price breakout. Whoever's building, added nearly 1/4million shares today, helped by algorithms to create the liquidity for their supply and hide the build, and make the trading look balanced/two-way to hold the SP back.

It's a three-way engineered day's trading today - 85% of the O trade buy volume was accounted for by only 20 trades (identifiable by 3-digit priced deals) - that's the accumulator agent, whereas 50% of the O trade sell volume was accounted for by only 15 trades (identifiable by 2-digit priced deals) - that's the cooperative agent which keeps the price supressed and boosts liquidity, backed by AT trades having a field day as usual, with large numbers of blocked Buy and Sell trades engineered to keep the Bid-Offer spread where it needed to be.

All of this engineered trading was controlled by 54 signalling trades (tiny numbers, type Buy or Sell or ?, sync'ed in tight 1 or 2 sec bursts, all O trades) typically appearing before significant SP, spread or volume changes.

Behind all this - whoever is accumulating is accelerating their acquisition, and overall volume is surging, yet keeping the Buy/Sell ratio slightly negative at the same time to supress SP break-out.

I'm expecting some action this week one way or the other - there are clear signs someone isn't expecting current bargain-basement PRE pricing to last much longer.

This is opinion and speculation, not advice, no recommendation is given, intended or implied, and you should always do your own research before making any investment decisions.

Not wishing to frighten the horses BUT....

Does anyone else smell takover in the air?