Member Info for Hogsnipe

Van Eyck RE Index is up 6.2% in a day, retracing this week's collapse.

At yesterday's close for PRE (135p) - the index bump should take it to 144p by end of play today.

I know China won't agree but so far it's been the only reliable predictor for PRE sp, and it's easy to check:

https://www.forbes.com/investment-funds/remx/?sh=6888dc152f75

Have a nice weekend LTHs.

Kutzzz - well done on your call last night on the MOU ahead of the RNS - spot on.

I would agree also with your previous summary looking at the facts behind the scenes. I'd add a couple more factors behind the sudden drop in PRE SP though.

Three things combined to hit the share price on Monday:

- Wood Group debt shares sell-off - as you & others suggested - has to be a short-lived but significant sell and pull-back on the SP

- general lapse in RE confidence across the board (more below)

- market 'massaging' to throw in an opportunistic tree-shake (as we now know, in advance of the good news RNS)

The general fall-back in RE companies this last week is quite clear, comparing PRE 1year SP chart, versus MP Materials' chart and VanEyck RE Index ETF chart. See here for the side by side charts:

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/p0b9touc4t52hk7uniev1/PRE_SP_VS_REMX_MP_220ct2025.jpg?rlkey=tz0vaopiwcueflpgdpeny6cti&st=l3l4zau4&dl=0

The strange behaviour of PRE dealing in the last week strongly hints that there is co-operative dealing to achieve Bid/Offer/Spread targets, exemplified by the huge numbers of "signal" deals - tiny amounts of shares, almost all O type mainly on the Buy Side, but a fair few on the Sell side and the ? unknown side. Also a continuing very high number of AT bot trades.

I wondered whether this anomalous dealing pattern is unique to PRE, or is it also going on in other RE enterprises?

RBW does show a similar situation in early trading after the open - a few clear-up trades to start the day, followed by an intensive signalling period with a large numbers of small deals (about 25% of all today' RBW s deals went through in just 4 seconds), all O's and a mix of Buys and Sells. Actual trading then starts - and astonishingly - all O deals - not a single AT trade today with 260+ deals placed.

My view is that by Monday next week PRE will have fully recovered this setback - these signalling trades appear to be getting less every day though they remain a mystery. Otherwise all the signs for PRE are positive now.

Thursday's Telegraph carries the news that J P Morgan Chase is planning to provide US$1.6TRILLION (£1.1TRILLION) of additional credit to critical industries in the US, including US$10 billion of direct equity investment in companies that help to build the US's economic resilience.

Kind of puts HMG's total interest in Pensana (£4M over 5 years) in perspective doesn't it?

The initiative will also include special, thematic research on private companies and supply chain management issues related to rare earths.

Here the link to the horse's mouth:

https://www.jpmorganchase.com/newsroom/press-releases/2025/jpmc-security-resiliency-initiative

JPMC are supporting companies of all sizes and development stages by offering advice, providing financing and in some cases, investing capital.

Top of the list of 4 key areas for this investment:

Supply Chain and Advanced Manufacturing, including critical minerals, pharmaceutical precursors and robotics

With the caveat that: In some areas all activity will be included, while in others only activities that 1) localize manufacturing in the U.S. or

2) have U.S. Government support (e.g., contract, co-investment, offtake) will be considered.

Pensana have the offtake requirement done and dusted, the co-investment commitment in place - all that remains now is the contract(s).

Twohits - thanks for that correction - I'd assumed that Wood Group did not need to raise additional cash, as Sidara's proposed acquisition includes a total capital injection of $450 million to sort out its liquidity problems and keep the deal on track for November 12. It still seems odd to me that having collateral like the PRE shares on their books doesn't seem to be recognised when calculating Wood's borrowing limit anyway.

OK - I give up LSE - G*d knows why you are chopping off this post. Here's the missing bit from the abrupt end to previous post:

Looking at large deals (>10,000) and small deals less than 200 shares, 78 large deals (3.2% of all today's deals) accounted for 33.8% of total volume. 1,094 small deals (45% of all today's deals) accounted for a tiny 1.2% of the total volume.

Quite a few deals were put through after the close today, adding over 1/4million shares bought vs 157K shares sold, which was enough to lift the day into almost evens Buy:Sell ratio 0.98 to 1

Stand-out statistic today was - 41% of all 2432 trades today, that's 1.049 deals were for trivial volumes accounting for only 0.9% of all volume.

That's one hell of a lot of effort to achieve a tiddly shift in shares. So, they show goes on!

Sundrum - thanks for the info from the Telegram PRE group. The 4.8m PRE shares issued in lieu of debt on Oct 14 is presumably now at Wood group's disposal to sell or keep. The Sidara takeover is not yet done and they could walk away before Nov 12. Question is - given Wood Group's £1.6billion debt burden - is Sidara likely to force the sale of Wood's PRE shares to achieve what amounts to £7.4m or a half of 1% debt reduction - when Pensana is clearly an appreciating asset? Doubt it. My vote is still - treeshake.

Ignore previous post - LSE chopped off the bottom half - here it is in full:

The Groundhog Express left a couple of minutes earlier today -an early start on a big day I think. From 08:04:13 there were 219 consecutive O deals, for less than 200 shares, every one of them a Buy, in the 18 seconds to 08:04:31.

The day's trading was oddly very closely balanced with 1.9m shares bought and 1.9m shares sold - with a buy-sell ratio of approx 1:1 by volume.

An odd contrast to the 2,457 buy trades vs 841 sell trades - but see below....

The biggest Buy - 217,938 shares, the biggest Sell - 68,000 shares.

Huge variations in the spread today - max 6.5p down to as low as 0.5p

AT trades were strongly negative today - about 1m shares sold against about 0.5 million bought - buy to sell ratio 0.52 to 1

But O trades were positive with 1.2m shares bought and 1.02m sold, buy to sell ratio 1.2:1

Looking at large deals (>10,000) and small deals (

Today's trading:

The Groundhog Express left a couple of minutes earlier today -an early start for a big day I think. From 08:04:13 there were 219 consecutive O deals, for less than 200 shares, every one of them a Buy, in the 18 seconds to 08:04:31.

The day's trading was oddly very closely balanced with 1.9m shares bought and 1.9m shares sold - with a buy-sell ratio of approx 1:1 by volume.

An odd contrast to the 2,457 buy deals vs 841 sell deals - but see below....

The biggest Buy - 217,938 shares, the biggest Sell - 68,000 shares.

Huge variations in the spread today - max 6.5p down to as low as 0.5p

AT trades were strongly negative today - about 1m shares sold against about 0.5m bought - buy to sell ratio 0.52 to 1

In contrast, O trades were positive with 1.2m shares bought and 1.02m sold, buy to sell ratio 1.2:1

Looking at large deals (>10,000) and small deals (

"US may seek more stakes in strategic companies to counter China", Bessent says today.

Bessant says that the US govt is preparing to invest directly in strategic sectors by taking more equity stakes in key companies to counter China's economic policies and export restrictions. "We're not going to come in and take stakes in non-strategic industries, but we've identified seven industries" to develop domestically, Bessent said.

Almost certainly, the RE industry will be one of the seven, so the intent to"develop domestically" might be seen by non-US RE companies as government subsidised unfair competition and today's market fall-back may be driven in part by his statements.

Here's the link:

https://www.marketscreener.com/news/us-may-seek-more-stakes-in-strategic-companies-to-counter-china-bessent-says-ce7d5adfdc8af525

Question is - how can Pensana place itself to benefit here? Let's hope it doesn't just miss the bus, but a lot of recent US-directed PRE activity suggests more good times ahead if Pensana's timing is right on cue.

This gets odder by the day - US rare earth companies are also showing a downturn but not on this scale. Lynas (Aus) is almost having a hard time as Pensana.

The VanEck RE Index is also down quite sharply, but 'only' by 11%.

MP however now has the benefit of a guaranteed floor price for RE minerals backed by US govt, and it's drop is nowhere near Pensana's. It may just be that there's something in the wind about China shortly knocking the bottom out of the RE market by severely depressing RE market prices to hammer Western investment in new non-China RE supply chains?

Geoplitically, Trump has softened his 100% tarrif threat to China because of China's recently introduced RE/Magnet/Technology restrictions, and will be meeting Xi shortly. Trump must have some cards up his sleeve to do that, otherwise all he can do is capitulate.

On the trading floor - it's another record (Groundhog) day for Pensana, heading for 2,500 deals and 3 million shares changing hands by the close.

So what just happened today?

Me? - I think it's possibly an opportunist treeshake targeted at PRE shares, helped along by rumours driving down investor enthusiasm for RE stocks generally, after a strong run in the last two weeks. I'll do the trades roundup later on today and see if there is any backing for the treeshake theory.

Canetoad/British Mike - with Pensana briefs and announcements - it always pays to read the words very carefully indeed.

Pensana a is NOT relocating Saltend to the US.

The words reported by the BBC are :

"Plans for a groundbreaking rare earths refinery in East Yorkshire have been abandoned, after the company behind the project decided to seek investment in the United States instead."

What Pensana are aiming at through their partnership deal with ReElement (a US traded company) and a NASDAQ listing, is to be part of ReElements investment program of building mined metal ore refineries across Africa (first one already in construction in SA) - including a new metals refinery on the Lobito corridor in Angola.

Pensana's No.1 backer is the Angolan Sovereign Wealth Fund, and that is fully committed to pursue Angolan government's policy of 'adding value' to the raw mining extraction industry, by building local refinery infrastructure to process these first stage mine extracts, to yield a higher value ore concentrates or metals, leading to lower export costs & higher-profit margin products from Angola.

This is all dependent (as ever) on Trump, who blows either way in the latest wind on investing in Africa - hw may decide that US re-shoring is a great, great idea and reject the idea of pouring American dollars into Africa (which he once described as a having "sh*thole" nations back in his first presidency in 2018). Or, he may go along with his beautiful, beautiful partnership deals with friendly countries outside China, as the only way to solve the RE supply chain chokehold China has on him (and everyone else). Who knows?

Novice - perhaps Saltend is going to be singled out in Rachel Reeves forthcoming budget to receive 100% HMG financial backing to evidence it's pre-eminent role in forward-thinking industrial development to support the key strategic technologies of the future.

Or possibly she'll just ask Pensana to return Kwarteng's Saltend silver shovel, so she can make a few bob for the coffers by selling it on ebay....

Novice157 - far from it - still very much a fan of the RE Index.

You won't be surprised to learn tha it's up more than It's up more than 12% since 5 days ago. How much is PRE up over the same period - 13%

Watch and learn....

SmartPunter - accidentally filled orders? I've just finished checking all of yesterday's trades and there were 822 of these micro-trades (well-below 100 shares) - that would take an army of finger-fumblers! These were placed deals so presumably carried dealing charges too.

AS1971 - I wondered if you were still around - thanks for the thumbs up to all LTHs in PRE.

Fixed my spreadsheet and sucked in yesterday's 1,622 trades in PRE, and the findings continue to amaze me. BTW - it's no different today, so Groundhog continues. The 8:06 special left Groundhog station just the same as it has done for 3 or 4 days now - 253 rapid O deals (buys and sells) for tiny numbers of shares in 15sec from 08:06:56 to 08:07:11. Here's more:

Daily trading 14 Oct 25 - 1,622 deals for 1,649,505 shares

All deals Buy:Sell ratio was 1.28 to 1 by volume, but a whacking 3.0 to 1, by deals (see more on this below).

Max single BUY deal 85,141 shares Max single SELL deal 55,900 shares

AT deals Buy:Sell ratio was 1.93 to 1 O deals Buy:Sell ratio was 0.79 to 1

So O trading wa sactually net NEGATIVE with 42.4% of the buy volume, but 63.8% of the sell volume

AT trading was very positive with 47.9% of the buy volume and 31.6% of the sell volume, bringing the end of day net positive.

Another day of HUGE imbalances with 1,030 small deals (less than 100 shares) of which O trades accounted for 984 small buys/sells, the remaining 56 small deals were ATs. So all small deals accounted for nearly two thirds (63.5%) of all deals placed and a mere 1.3% of all traded volume.

Further thoughts on what's driving all these small deals - there could be two types of market manipulation at play here:

- 'painting the tape' - to create the illusion of momentum, high trading deals volume, and increasing investor interest

- 'creating artificial volume' to give momentum traders spurious breakout or trend signals, or to confuse algorithmic trading systems.

PRE trading today clearly gives the misleading impression (Novice please note) that with 1198 buys (878,301 shares) out of 1622 deals (1,649,505 shares traded) the stock is on a strong uptick in positive trading.

The underlying truth is that 822 of the 1198 buys were for less than 100 shares and only placed 16,348 shares, ie: 1.9% of yesterday's total volume traded, O deals overall SOLD a net 97,694 shares more than they bought, whereas 272 AT deals placed 637,873 shares, and 166 of those were buys and placed 420,244 shares.

The shift in O traders from buying to selling today is a worrying development and seems to suggest two possibilities:

- all this small deal activity is geared to artificially pumping up the price, and cautious investors have been turned to taking profits as a result.

- or the artificially high trading deals volume is a preparation for a tree-shake of the newcomer investors who have bought in during the last 4 months, so algorithmic traders can accumulate on behalf of institutional i

Pwlx - yeah I know....

A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you're talking real money.....

Here's what MicroSoft CoPilot thinks:

The 299 ordinary buy trades of PRE shares on the LSE this morning appear to be algorithmic micro-trades, likely part of a signaling or liquidity provision strategy. Between 08:06:33 and 08:06:49 today, Pensana Plc (PRE) saw an unusually dense cluster of 299 buy trades on the London Stock Exchange. These trades were all marked as Ordinary Buy and executed within a narrow 16-second window—an extremely high frequency for manual trading, strongly suggesting algorithmic execution.

Here’s what this pattern likely indicates:

* Possible Explanations:

- Algorithmic Signalling: The trades may be part of a microstructure signaling strategy, where small, rapid-fire buys are used to test market depth, provoke reactions from other algorithms, or signal intent to accumulate without revealing full size. This is common in illiquid or thinly traded stocks like PRE.

- Liquidity Provision or Iceberg Orders: The 299 trades could represent slices of a larger order broken up to minimize market impact. This is typical of iceberg algorithms, which expose only a small portion of the total order at a time.

- Quote Stuffing or Spoofing (less likely): If the trades were rapidly posted and canceled (which we can't confirm without Level 2 data), it could resemble quote stuffing—a tactic to confuse or slow down other algorithms. However, since these were executed buys, spoofing is less likely unless paired with offsetting sells.

- Market Maker Activity: A designated market maker might be fulfilling obligations to provide liquidity, especially if PRE is thinly traded. The burst could reflect inventory balancing or hedging.

* Contextual Clues:

- PRE’s recent price action shows a sharp rise today—up over 12% to 165p. This could have triggered algorithmic interest or momentum-based strategies.

- Trade size and price: Without granular data on the size of each trade, it’s unclear whether these were uniform micro-lots or varied. If they were all small (e.g., 1–10 shares), that would reinforce the signaling hypothesis.

- Time of day: The activity occurred just after market open, a common time for algorithms to establish positions or test liquidity.

We're stuck in some weird loop here - another huge number of deals (1400 so far) today. With even more early rapid signal deals than yesterday.

Pattern from the open seems to be a few minutes of normal trading, then about 8:06 the show begins - hundreds of consecutive O deals for f'all shares.

Today, between 08:06:33 and 08:06:49 (that's just 16 seconds), two hundred and ninety nine deals were placed - every one an O buy for a small number of shares.

And the same thing goes on throughout the day, except that you'll see many shorter runs of these O signal trades on both Buy and Sell sides.

I've no idea what the purpose of all these trades is - but someone who has Level 2 access and a broking/dealing background can maybe offer some explanation or give us a clue why it's happening?

My primary concern is whether all this strange activity is purposed to boosting PRE SP or suppressing it?

Novice - today's trading broke my EXCEL sheet - I had decided that 1000 trades a day was a safe max - clearly I was wrong!

So no analysis of today until I expand the spreadsheet.

You can however, see all 1721 trades over on ADVFN - and by eye I'd say the signalling trades continue in strength as a major chunk of the total deals, so whatever was going on is still going on.

A mind-blowing 279 consecutive Ordinary sells for trivial numbers of shares went through in 18 seconds up to 08:08:47. Also a substantial number of multi-thousand sell deals went through today, and one 100,000 sell posted after hours but date-time stamped at 11:37am (? ) so someone's cashing out their chips - let's hope that's not a sign the casino's about to close!

Sundrum - re: China's involvement in Angola's infrastructure, I looked into this a while ago when I was considering PRE as a punt. The situation is more or less the same now:

Angola has taken upwards of $70 billion of loan investment since 2000 from China, primarily for new hydro power projects between Luanda and Longonjo, electricity grid expansion, rehabilitation of the Benguela Railway (aka Lobito Corridor) and major upgrades to both Lobito and Luanda Ports.

Angola's China infrastructure loans were collateralised by Angolan oil exports at below-market long-term prices. China now has bargain-basement oil from Russia and is drastically cutting its oil imports through renewables investment on a colossal scale.

The Angolan Govt is secretive about the outstanding balance of China debt, but it is the largest of any African country, estimated at over $17 billion. There are no public details of which infrastructure projects are still in hock to China.

With China's reduced dependency on oil from Angola however, there is patent risk to Angola that China could force renegotiated loan terms to give themselves contractor dominance, operational involvement, embedded financial holds which will confer considerable infrastructure control to China.

As an aside the AFC total investment of $12.7billion in 42 member countries since inception in 2007 is dwarfed by Angola's $70billion China-backed investment. Also the Lobito Corridor expansion initiative is directed more towards connecting the Congo and Zambia with Lobito, with an eye to non-RE minerals like cobalt.

British Mike - yes:

Angola, Ethiopia, Egypt, Kenya, and Zambia are among the African countries with the highest debt owed to China, with Angola having the largest debt at an estimated $17.8 billion. Other major countries with significant debt include South Africa, Cameroon, and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Thanks for the responses - there is isn't much online information about trading market signalling (no surprise there since it's somewhat frowned upon, especially by the SEC), but I did find support for the view that it's maybe the marketmakers at work, see here:

http://www.pennystockdream.com/Market-Maker-Signals

The finger points at market makers because ordinary traders would be unlikely to bear the dealing costs of banging through dozens of trades each for a handful of shares. They claim the size of the deal = a signal to coordinate SP movements and spreads among all of the share's MMs, as follows:

List Of Market Maker Signals

Deal Signals

1. 100 - I need Shares.

2. 200 - I need Shares badly but do not take the stock down.

3. 300 - Take (or I am taking) the stock down at least 30% so I can load shares.

4. 400 - Keep trading it sideways.

5. 500 - Gap the stock. Gap can be up or down, depending on direction of 500 signal.

6. 505 - I am short on shares

7. 600 - Apply resistance at the ASK to keep the price from increasing.

8. 700 - Move the price up.

9. 777 - Also recognized as a signal to move the price up.

10. 800 - Prepare for an increase in trading volume.

11. 900 - Allow the stock to float and trade freely.

12. 911 - Pending News/Press Release On The Way

13. 1000 - Don't let it run

14. 2100 - Let it run

NB - this is off a Penny Shares Trading website, so the signal deal sizes above would not be sensible for a stock like PRE at it's present SP, so perhaps the deals we are seeing early in the day in PRE trading from 1 to 40 or 50 or so would be more representative

To delve deeper, you'd want to correlate specific signal trades of say 1 to 10 in size, with time-linked changes in the PRE SP, the spread, appearance of high volume AT dealing bursts, single large buy/sell deals, resistance levels - which would be time-consuming to say the least. Or, you could come at it backwards and ask the question - what other explanation is there for hundreds of tiny O deals every day now?

My thoughts:

- perhaps PRE trading is illiquid - too much demand when there's a decrease in the free float? Institutional holders and LTHs I imagine would not be interested in trading at all just now.

- Private Equity lining itself up for a bid, and trying to suppress what would become a galloping increase in PRE's capitalisation/SP?

- market makers increasing their PRE inventory, in anticipation of a rapid profitable rise in SP, but also trying to share the downside risks of a large holding by coordinating their own positions with the other MMs in PRE trading?

- a group of nominees is using these signals to build up or swap a covert holding in PRE - choose your