Member Info for investor33

Sightwatcher ; " Very strange master! Every RNS with bit of hope turns SP into downward Spiral! Cannot understand! Perhaps there is much of unknown uncertainty which is responsible for this? "

I think it's obvious to me that on positive RNS news the professionals in this game dump a load of shares on the ask which they bought off retail investors on the bid. No doubt the positive news of the RNS creates enough demand for them to shift them quickly....

Proquo ; "Agree with that. Aim is just one big scam really. I think once I've sold my Matd holding I'll not invest again in an Aim stock."

I agree with that. IMO Aim is best left to the professionals and the games that they play. It's just not a suitable arena for retail investors to operate in, most of who seemingly have absolutely no idea what's going on anyway as regards the professional money.

Proquo ; I agree with you re Stas.

And like I said, the more that retail investors can be spooked, the less sticky their hands will be, which means a continuous flow of sells on the bid side. And if positive RNS news comes through, but the share price does not move - or even dips a bit - then the more spooked retail investors are likely to be.

At one time the share price used to spike on a quick FOMO rally following a positive RNS , but that has stopped now as the dynamics of the price action change on the cusp of production at long last. Back in say 2022 news such as we had today would have spiked the price up from say 3p up to 6p or 7p. And then straight back down again.

Doc ; "Exactly. MMs make their money off the bid/offer spread. They're not going to risk holding considerable positions in a microcap oil exploration company based in a corrupt country, where it might do 10x or go bust."

Which is why they are flipping them quickly between the bid and the ask whilst this sideways price action goes on.. Whether you buy a house, do it up quickly and sell it, or buy shares on the bid and sell on the ask, the idea of flipping is to do it as quickly as possible....That means less risk of a house price crash or a share price crash.

And most likely also accumulating some shares at low prices which they will use to sell into and thereby maintain some liquidity if need be on a sudden FOMO rally....The lower the price of the accumulation the better.

Clearly when the MMs spiked the price down in July last year to 1.8p through hitting and hoovering up a mass of retail stops, the idea was to buy as low as possible before offloading all the way up to 6.4p on the same day.....

Jojoba ; you are right about the risk. That's why low prices and sideways price action suits the MMs far better.

Look at a monthly chart of MATD going back say 10 years. You will see that most of the price action during that time has been at relatively low prices ( say between 1.5p to 3.5p ) and mainly sideways.

They can also insulate themselves from future risk through accumulating as low as possible, which is what I think they are doing right now. If there was a sudden FOMO rally with genuine demand then they can sell into this as the price rises. So they are not necessarily left bag holding near the top were the price to suddenly crash. Anyway, once they have distributed, it doesn't really matter were the price to suddenly drop sharply. Clearly though, minimum risk for the MMs is a sideways and stable price action such as we have right now.

Ray - "you have to ask yourself why so many shares are still being sold cheap "

It's another reason why it suits the MMs to keep the price at these types of levels. Had the share price on today's good news risen to let's say 3.5p due to retail investor demand, then don't you think that this would cause the shares already owned by retail investors to be held in much more sticky hands ? Which means the flow of shares being sold by retail investors via their brokers on the bid side would dry up. Which means the ability to flip shares between the bid and the ask also dries up - for this there needs to be cheap shares to hoover up on the bid side.

Holding the share price at this current level, and going largely sideways suits the MMs for now. They know that there could be very high demand in the near future, but for now they can flip shares, and also accumulate in case of a genuine rally caused by a sudden huge imbalance between supply and demand. Comments such as you see on this board every day from the likes of Stas also help keep this flow of sells on the bid side flowing.....the more uncertainty and doubt amongst retail investors the better.

Stas ; this idea of a ' big seller ' who is always beating down the share price is pure fiction invented by people who don't understand how the professional money ( MMs and their trading desks ) work. There is no big private seller.

What has happened after every single recent RNS is that the MMs have dumped a load of shares on the ask which they bought off retail investors on the bid side. And when an RNS hits they suddenly raise the ask sharply at 8am to try and sell them as high as possible - hence a brief ' suckers rally ' spike when there is sudden apparent demand which turns out to be false.

Whether people like it or not, the MMs control this share price for now. They are constantly flipping shares through buying on the bid from retail investors, and then selling them on the ask. With light volumes this is an easy trick to carry off - they simply hoover up a trickle of retail sell orders and then dump them. This way the share price can be kept nice and low, with lots of sideways action - perfect for them to keep making money. And if there is sudden genuine demand - and they can't hold the share price back any longer - then they can then sell into the FOMO rally with shares that they accumulated at around the 2p level.

Luqs786 ; "MMs playing games again"

The sideways action at low prices suits the MMs just fine right now.

They can buy off retail investors on the bid at rock-bottom prices, and then dump them to retail investors on the ask. Hence the constant flow of large sell orders over the last few weeks which has left many on here scratching their heads....As long as there are takers on the ask then they can keep this up for the time being, and make a lot of money whilst doing it.

And right now they can also accumulate very low and stock their warehouses in preperation for a sudden surge in demand, which they can sell into a lot higher up if there is an imbalance between supply and demand during a FOMO rally.

In both scenarios, the MMs win.

Master82 ; "Who can hold this many shares and off load them on daily basis".

How about MMs simply flipping shares between the spread ? So buying off retail investors on the bid and then simply flipping them on the ask ? Of course retail investors via their brokers are buying on the ask and selling on the bid. It's not about just ' making a market ' but also actively trading their own accounts to quickly flip shares.

Thornogson ; " I can see that the Market Makers might now think there's more fun to be had, and money to be made, by letting the price go on the next meaningful announcement."

Definitely. Some have still not realised that some of those orders placed on the bid or the ask are shares actually owned by the MMs via their own accounts. There's no way of knowing whether shares you can see in level 2 have been routed through a broker on behalf of a retail investor, or are actually owned by a MM. MMs are actively trading and flipping shares.

@adw108 ; " Well I think the granting of a permit and confirmation of a deal will see this rerate because the concerns that we’ll be producing this year are there and to some extent valid."

Well you may well be right. A concern I have though though concerns price manipulation, so I'm very wary about sudden sharp and brief price spikes vs genuine rerates. In the past we have had the spikes, but not proper rerates. Hopefully production might change the dynamics of the price action, though I will remain extremely wary of price volatility and possible price manipulation. The MMs are also very much in the business of flipping shares taken from retail investors.

Adw198 ; " The reason it’s low is because we don’t have a permit and don’t have a deal to transport and sell the oil."

Yet we have MRPAM's permission to use temporary production equipment, and can therefore start in 1 to 2 week's time, assuming that the PC draft contract is signed and approved by then. MRPAM certainly wont withhold its approval of the contract, and we were told that the contract has been agreed in principle.

Compare that to May last year, with no access to the land having been granted by the district authority ( no voting had taken place ) a difficult provincial governor refusing to sign the tripartite agreement, and a lack of funds anyway to develop the site even if access had been granted. Yet the price briefly spiked to 6.5p.

Ok, there has been a raise since, however this still doesn't explain the difference between the share price now and that brief 6.4p valuation in May 2023 does it ?

By the way, nearly all the price action in that 11.5 year period has been between the 1.5p/2p support area to around 5p. So in that range.

In fact take away that 6 month surge in early 2017 and the share price has been remarkably range bound - with just 5 decent spikes to around the 10p level. All the rest of the price action pretty much in that time has been in the range of 1.5p to 5p.

Discounting the 6 month or so 2017 price anomaly up to 38p, only about 24 month's worth of price action has been outside that range since May 2013. So mostly a really well defined accumulation and distribution range.

"and then pulling up a MATD daily chart to see for themselves."

A monthly chart I meant to say. Though a daily one is also ok, the historical price action pattern is even more obvious with a very long term monthly bar chart.

I've just been looking at a monthly chart for MATd stretching back to May 2013 - so nearly 11.5 years. If you were to remove that enormous spike between Jan 2017 to May 2017 - when for some reason the share price suddenly rocketed to a peak of 38p - the price action is remarkably consistent throughout this 11.5 years.

During this period the price has consistently supported between 1.5p and 2p - in fact I counted roughly around 30 monthly bars over the 11.5 years when the price fell back and supported at this level. Discounting the huge May 2017 surge which lasted around 6 months, you then have just 5 spikes up to around the 10p level, however since late 2018 this has only happened twice ( Sept 2019 and May 2021 ) with just one other significant spike following these two in May last year, which was to 7p.

So IMO some people getting in a panic about the current share price need perhaps step back from a myopic obsession with the daily share price, and look instead at the pattern of the bigger picture.

For me, all those frequent periods where the share price has settled back to around the 1.5p to 2p level are clear periods of MM accumulation phases. Since the start of 2022 I have counted about 10 monthly bars in which the share price has gone to between 5p to 6p, plus that one bar to 7p in May 23. So that's when the MMs have distributed what they had accumulated around the 1.5p to 2p mark.

Interestingly, the last 4 months have shown a noticeably higher level of volume compared to most of the rest of the chart - there has been a lot more activity going on with shares changing hands.

So IMO some of the more panicky ones on here might do themselves a favour by going on to a site such as barchart dot com and then pulling up a MATD daily chart to see for themselves. I've had in the past a few sarcastic remarks on here about studying charts and using technical analysis, but IMO if you can't read a bar chart then you should keep a million miles away from volatile AIM shares such as this one....To repeat - there is nothing odd or particualrly bad about the current share price - it is clearly just following a predicatable pattern which in the past we have seen over and over again - in other words the MMs are accumulating right now. .

Stas ; I largely tend to agree with you.

I don't know whether it happens here, but I know that in the US markets you also sometimes get orders on level 2 which are then withdrawn before being filled so as to mislead on direction. For example if someone sees a very large order sitting on the ask they may decide to sell, as it will act a strong resistance.

Good point about manipulation of the spread. Presumably that quick 8am spike up to about 3.4p back on the 22nd August was purely caused by a large spread with the ask being marked up suddenly ?

Stas ; " the MM's ignore this 'liquidity' so often its unreal."

Well that's a moot point then I guess.

However, whatever the truth about MMs providing liquidity is, the fact is that they have trading desks staffed by traders who are actively trading, and who receive big bonuses if they do that job well. They are not just some kind of neutrals making money just on the spread. Their only obligation is supposedly to provide liquidity - there's nothing to stop them actively trading.

Doc ; " That's just not how MMs play this game. They make plenty of money on the bid/offer spread. Why would they risk being up to their eyeballs in a dodgy Mongolian oil stock that could go to zero at any time? "

So you are adamant that the MMs don't trade their own accounts as well ? Anyway, accumulating as low as possible insulates them from the risk they take from having to provide liquidity if there is a major imbalance between supply and demand. When the price is going sideways they can just make money on the bid and ask all day long.

Wigster ; I think we will all be fine - don't get shaken out by MM tricks and their accumulation tactics.

Btw, I've just reported Mongolialollol's last post. This guy is just a malicious troll - I suggest that others report him. It's one thing to have differing opinions and to debate them - but this guy is just a nasty troll.

Doc ; " Could be a lot of stop losses about to go, because this is about to drop into the 1's."

Standard MM tactic to hit the stops so as to hoover up cheap shares during an accumulation phase. And this way they can buy them cheaply without driving the price up against themselves before they are ready for it to move up.

Exhibit no 1 : July last year - an 8 am spike down to 1.8p straight after a 7am RNS, having finished at 3.5p the previous day. And then all the way up to 6.5p on the same day....