Member Info for knot

Asside from the Trump incident, which was leveraged by some shorts, the end of day auction cleared the same level as the last trade. A single later market maker trade of 6.3k volume went through at 343.1p, so not all that representative of the close. During the dip below 330p a flurry of around 34% (177k shares) of the days traded volume went through, excluding the after market auction, so that looked like quite an interestign support, although the shorts looked to have kept some of the positions because unlike all the other banks CBG did not return to near flat on the day based on the closing auction.

Excluding the Trump flash crash the main support volume level was 340p with 10% of the days trade volume in the 340-314p band, while the Trum main support volume was 330-331p with 11%.

Yesterday, supposedly, there was no change in the reported short positions, although the reported balance is now around 4.2m shares, down 2m or so from a month back when the price was around 50p lower. Yesterday the drop was in the first half hour with the rest of the day flat, so a different approach for a short, possibly not as confident of pushing the price further down.

Another rollercoaster day for popcorn...munch...munch....

Well, yesterday turned out to be rather more interesting in a few ways. The short report indicated that WorldQuant bought back and exited the 0.5% threashold buying back 195k shares, even though the price dropped through the day and supposedly nobody else picked up a registered short different. So, that points to either sub 0.5% short players or a longer holder bailing out on the back of what was otherwise an expected trading update, so difficult to belive that was a trigger. Back to the rinse repeat pattern due to the biased liquidity balance due to the FCA and SC making a mess.

Today the gap at the open creates a conundrum from those that believe that markets always close the gap, or clarity that this dip is just that, a dip. The market crept up to the end of the day with the after market auction clearing at a smaller premium with 25% of the total volume. Most of the days volume was seen in the support levels around 335-340p being 78% of the days volume picked up in that range. 337 being mid point gap between two different supports.

So tomorrows report will either show a catch up on short reporting or leave the question between smaller shorts having a dabble or a longer holder bailing out on the back of other shorts closing and an as expected trading update. On balance I'd find it hard to believe that all of the volume that pushed yesterday down was long holders exiting, rahter more smaller shorts stretching the elastic to see what and who falls out.

Stretchy rollercoaster days for popcorn...munch...munch...

The tagged trade summary looks interesting : Sold £696.82k / Bought £1.82m - I don't tend to pay much attention to this tagged summary. To me that looks like the shares should (in thoery if the tagging is representative of actual activity) recover relatively quickly because whoever shorted today may have seen the lowest trades for the rest of the year.

Curious popcorn time...munch...munch...

Results, nothing exciting. Share reaction - shorts taking the opportunity to flush anyone out, as expected.

Yesterday Citadel reduced their short, which is quite interesting compared to todays price reaction, likely one or more of the other shorts day trading. After market auction clearing above the afternoon trading, which is part day traders closing and possibly another buyer steadily picking up day on day. Interesting comments on the sub 350 liquidity as that would point to the market being bid down with little on the offer side by a short player. Most of the chunky volumes appeared in the 350-355 range (56% of day tradeded volume - ex auction) so that gives an indication of where the support was or the margin the early shorts cashed in at. Citadel may have bought more back in today, so short on short, which is always amusing.

Back to the popcorn...munch...munch...

Nothing really to add at this stage, the end of day auction being a lot higher was a bit of a slap in the face of the shorts using end of day settlement to close out shorts added earlier to push the price down. Suspect they will have a go at a grand push down if there is nothing additionally bullish in the update, although it may well turn against them quite quickly because it looks like someone else is buying. Will see.

Popcorn at the ready...munch...munch...

WorldQuant reduced on Friday by only 0.1% (150k shares) so the run up was not only the shorts closing out, although it could have also been contract related that is tied to shorts closing out with derivatives. Alternatively a new long added some volume, which could be very interesting as it's making the situation more squeezy to get out of a 6.5m short share position. My guestimate, finger in the air, is that the 6.5m is around a 200p discount on todays price (570p).

After market auction notably closed over 3p higher than the last trades of the day with 182k volume going through and 300k within day volume and no trades above 10k shares. The early volatility looked like a bit of a fight with the 9p swings between market maker prices. The steady climb seems to be following the trend since 11th April. Possibly another 0.1% of shorts bought back today or some short on short activity ? Who knows..... will see on tomorrows report.

Popcorn away...munch...munch...

In a way I would say that some of the short term selling out and buying back on a dip may work to the advantage of longer term holders because it would reduce or dilute the returns that the short sellers may be getting day trading the price down. Ending up with the shorts squeezing out higher. Each to their own on trading style, risk apetite, stress and how much time you want to trade or sit staring at a screen. Plus, trade too much outside of a tax shelter (ISA / SIPP) and you get taxed as a day trader.

Fundamentally longer term, it may be just a sit, wait and watch the rollercoaster. Timing the market requires a lot of time watching the price movements, news, geoplitics, etc. in detail. Just like today for example, was the first dip the buying opportunity or the second dip or tomorrow or a weeks time, potentially for a 2% return, when on Friday if you missed the first hour that was 4% gone. The circa 50p gap on the 21 Jan ? Buffets comments about the farmer analogy or the transfer of wealth from the impatient to the patient may be quite relevant. If you think your a day trader get an IG account and trade spreads and CFD's with a demo account and see if you make a proffit after a month.

As a fund manager said in a presentation their star traders are only right about 54% of the time. The spread and costs involved with CFD's make that 54% part of the reason why IG state '71% of retail accounts lose money'. Retail is only 29% right. Trading can then look like gambling when your impatiently trading time rather than investing. End of the day, each to their own beliefs.

I'm sticking to the belief of rollercoaster popcorn...munch...munch...

Squeeeeeeeeeeeezy day. The after market auction also cleared higher (368.6p) than the last trade (365.8p).

Looks like Citadel may be the one closed out today, they reduced yesterday to 0.88% from 0.91% (45k shares) possibly trying to day trade out of the position. Reported shorts yesterday were 4.4% or 6.6m shares, which lost around £1.5m today.... ouch...

There appears to be a lot of volume attracted to 365p an suspect that this may be option or swap volume strike level, although the the jump up to 370 was on very thin volume with a short throwing an 80k trade in to try and cap it was interesting. Looked like someone is still possibly building a short or protecting a book position. There will be some interesting meetings going on to justify holding onto the short positions with the losses so far. The 365p level may well be interesting for Monday asside from the even more interesting after market short report to see who was flushed out today.

Popping tastic weekend... munch...munch...

Citadel added again yesterday to the short with another 135k shares and last added on Monday. Could be protecting 345-350 range as they are sitting on a bit of a loss with a book around 307p (adding proffit from reduction around 270p).

Todays activity seemed to revert back to the pattern of the market drifting up and then the effort to push down an hour or so before the close with the after market auction clearing higher than the last trades. Market open at 335.8p and then two trades later at 344.2p was quite interesting especially as it was a market mater at 344.2p.

Good update from RBC the prior uber bear with the doomsday glasses turning rose tinted now ?

Get the popcorn ready for next week... munch...munch...

"the thing is, what can they report?" - Winterflood sale, better than expected quarterly performance, higher reduction in costs, improving ratio's, to name a few as possible positives. Yes the ruling may well be more substantive, however the key issue is more the ruling in relation to the share price at the time of the ruling. With a massively discounted book value that implies a far larger loss, any clarity from the court that is anything other than fiduciary bribe the shares will be positive purely because of the removal of uncertainty. The quarterly update will just change that relative discounted position. Relativity.

Yesterday Caius continued to reduce the short with another 0.1% reduction (150k shares) and now at 0.49%, which was around 10p for a 0.1% buyback. Another short backing out and possibly a different short adding the following day, again. Rinse repeat.

Looking at CBG relative to the other four big banks today it's quite clear that from around 11:47 the shorts were active (50k sell) in pushing down and possibly a different player around 15:40 made it feel a bit squeezy with a 4p rise on minimal volume (pushing the bid higher). Up 18.5% on the month and up nearly 7% on the last 5 days, a little slide is not realy unexpected. As said earlier "All part of the fun."

Sunny day again for popcorn...munch...munch...

The auction clearing nearly 2p above where it was trading possibly looks like more swaps being bought in for the shorts to reduce with.... possibly....

Yesterdays games were even more interesting with 2 shorts adding and 2 of the larger longer term shorts reducing with a net addition of shorts of 75k shares with a close on close market gain of 2p, so that did not go well for the shorts. Full short on short. Caius and WorldQuant reducing by 241k shares and Citadel and Systematica adding 316k in new shorts. Very interesting indeed and really shows the context as to who thought they knew what and when, only for four of the seven shorts going in opposite directions in one day. I would guess that around 340p is pushing position limits and possibly having to defend the original short plays. Systematica first reported back on 10th April when the market was at 273p and on that original position that one is a £541k loss. Citadel started back around the same time but seemed to have day traded a bit and only started building more in May pushing down from around 340p.... Will next weeks update cause a massive squeeze or the last short attempt pullback before the court ruling.... looks like the stage is being set for huge volatility next week.

Interesting times... for more popcorn...munch...munch...

13-May-25 10:01:17 342.00 80,000 Sell* 341.60 343.60 273.60k O

13-May-25 09:39:35 342.00 50,000 Sell* 342.40 344.60 171.00k O

From the trades page - have a look for the column names.

Notice that these are flagged as "sell" and the proximity of the traded price to the bid price. Those two trades look like someone may be buying as the shorts try to push down, where they are sitting on the bid and waiting for the sellers (shorts) to try and push down. If you have bigger pockets you can sit on the bid until the shorts are out of limit and they may be in a difficult situation. Only a couple (£440k ish) of chunky rounded volume trades, so will see how the rest of the day ends up.

Chunky popcorn... munch... munch...

Caius reduced their short position on Friday by around 150k shares so they are now at 0.65%, down from the high of 1.88% back on the 17th January when the market was trading at 243p.... ouch.

Today CBG seemed to be trading more inline with Barclays with one notable sell volume of 125k (338p) at 9:54, whichh caused the first drop. Market sentiment on the banks and a possible exit from the FTSE250 index into the US market seemed to be a possible reason for the pullback, in addition to the shorts playing around. The after close auction cleared at 336.2p for a volume only 185 shares different from the single large sell earlier in the day at 338.296p.. Other than that at least it was another positive day.

Trumping popcorn...munch...munch...

Citadel added 165k to their short yesterday and promptly lost around £15k just on the addition and around £96k on the position as a whole (0.71%) if it is a naked short (not hedged). Total reported shorts 4.98% or around 7.5m shares and todays 9p move is a £675k hit.

Today saw 18 trades above 5k shares with 5 x 10k lots, where the 10k trades have been a regular pattern at times of sorts. My guess would be a 0.1% unwind today.

After close auction volumes (138k) lower at around 40% of the traded volumes (347k). Other than that, not a lot going on, asside from the rise before the quarterly update. May be a rinse and repeat of a short attempt at the quarterly, although it may backfire this time with it being closer to the court ruling. More so if Winterflood is sold.

Another sunny day for popcorn...munch...munch...

"What I find slightly puzzling is that they seemingly achieved that without markedly moving the SP" - this may well be swap liquidation / expiry. I noticed the same thing that happened on Friday. This may well be part of the last months 15% climb as swaps near expiry the other side has to buy back. If they were opportunistically running people over in the after market auction, the after market auction dynamics would change. The reason I think they are swap expiries is that both shorts were reducing, although not by a correlated amount that would indicate consistent position unwind/expiry.

Prior RNS like this one from Bank of America show some of the swap contracts, some of the positions may be rolled over to the next month https://www.lse.co.uk/rns/CBG/holdings-in-company-zq5p5kw6zmmcvxt.html

When looking at the next RNS for BoA https://www.lse.co.uk/rns/CBG/holdings-in-company-jnp0jwiiciw4884.html the chunky swap for 21 Feb 2025 appeared on the 28th March 2024. Swaps for 6 May 2025 existed back in 12 Apr 2024 under BoA RNS notifications. Going by BoA swap dates there are no more magical dissapearing positions due... possibly.. The current market price factors in what you don't know and sometimes you just get a reason for a market move a month back. Not all changes have to impact the days price the notification is made.

In terms of the claims companies, depending upon the wording of the contract, whoever claims may end up liable for the 30% fee even if they are compensated directly from the car company or via an alternate scheme. In those instances whoever signs up is possibly just giving away 30% for zero benefit. It's possibly not necessarily about the amount, it's possibly about having the right to claim a portion or minimum level of whatever claim amount is deemed correct regardless of the mechanism. The companies may only loose out if there are zero claims. One of those unintended consequences the FCA did not consider, amongst the many other unintended consequences.

Draft smooth popcorn....munch...munch...

Millenium added a token 30k shares to their short position yesterday if the last notified position of 0.48% had not changed since 24th April. That puts them back into the at or above 0.5% group, which tallys up at 5.16% or 7.8m shares. The after close secondary 55k buy 2.9p above the auction, whilst small is a curious pickup of a few shares on a more chunky days trading volumes. Maybe just more short on short position manouvering ahead of the quarterly trading update. Todays volumes had a few 10k and above trades, so looks like someone shuffled around 0.1-0.2% around. Curiously relatively fewer 5k trades for the volumes, which was a pattern previously.

Remember that the full short position is around 7.8m shares, so a trading day today with just under 700k shares trades is 10x smaller than the volume needed to close out the shorts. Other than that a relatively quiet day.... yawn....

Sleepy popcorn...munch...munch....

WorldQuant (150k) and Caius (166k) both continued to reduce on Friday with Citadel (105k) running against them, so we have short on short at play with reductions (210k) greater than additions. Volume today was thin, so the pullback today looks like a reversion to the end of day play with the auction volumes close to the traded volumes in the day, around 150k each. In the context of the short on short last week todays pullback looks more conflicted with Citadel possibly adding more to their position on thin volume that may slap them in the face later. Two of the largest shorts reducing and possibly Citadel looking at opportunistic day trading in the interim, otherwise they are the outlier.

Short on short popcorn...munch....munch....

"great unwashed, who are far more likely to vote Labour" - hmmmm..... careful...

Nice reply, however your missing one blindingly obvious event going on at the moment, Reform are going to be part (outright or coalition partner) of the next government and hitting the financial firms that are needed to help fund the treasury debt is a far bigger issue than the voter (buying a bit more 'tat' in your words). Labour are not going to win the next election. Coalition partner with Reform ? I think I see a flock of pigs flying past.

It seems more like an issue around turning an oil tanker (2021 FCA redress ambition) as they started the process off with blind confidence and it's now creating such a problem (backfired with bribery) they are trying to turn before hitting the proverbial iceberg. Without bribery the handouts are minimal and now covered.

Roma jumping ship from the FCA to car finance firm backing legal firm is very interesting and maybe a perception as to where the FCA is going to end up. People jump ship to where they think the winners are rather than jumping onto a sinking boat, they jump from them.

https://www.leasinglife.com/news/square-4-partners-hires-former-fca-consumer-finance-lead/

"So as usual disagree" - the news article post seems like you have doubts. Plus, what are you actually disagreeing about because part of what you say is supporting the "fiscal loss to HMG" argument I made earlier.

Curious early hours popcorn... munch... munch...

Basic issue of is handing £1 out to people now better than hading out £1 over the next 3 years in the form of dividends.

Hand out £1 now and people are likely to pay off debt (no tax revenue) or buy some other item, which on balance of what the average consumer buys would be an imported item. That item may well have VAT applicable, so some revenue, however the bigger problem is it impacts the trade deficit and increases borrowing requirements via a waker pound, etc. So, quick spending is double edged with some benefits and some drawbacks. That handout is also a one off and takes away future growth from the companies that would give the free handouts.

Leaving the money with the companies, who would then pay dividends out, creates a regular constant stream of tax (income tax, being higher, more revenue) and also adds value to the UK as a whole by making the companies more valuable. Those dividends, may then get spent with another 20% from VAT drawn into the Treasury on top of the income tax attached to the dividends.

From a revenue perspective from the Treasury and government as a whole, the vested interest would appear to be not to have a free cash handout, which also damages the reputation of the UK financial industry as a whole, impacting future tax incomes.

While a one off free handout may appear to be a boon for the government, when you actually consider the longer term implications (which fall into the next election timeframe) a redress scheme is not beneficial at all.

Others may think a free cash handout is a bonus for the economy, however that does not consider the implications as to what it is spent on, nor the timeline which would certainly have a 'dung cart' moment, just in time for the next election.

Long term popcorn...munch...munch...

Thursday turned out to be Caius reducing with 180k less of a short position being reported at the close of Thursday so they may have been reducing around 330p. Todays fall was quite an interesting one when looking at the last few minutes of the days trading with the final push to 321.8p, only to see the post close aution clear much higher at 329.4p. Average VWAP traded price for the day was 330.7p. That appeared to make a lot of the days push down quite interesting and the 321.8p last trade a little off market. Fridays trading may have seen at least one short adding, which in the context of Caius reducing the day before makes for short on short trading.

Working with the last reported short position for Citadel instead of assuming they added 0.53% on the 30th, the week on week (Friday close to Thursday close) change so far in short volume appears to be a net reduction of around 301k shares. With Caius and Worldquant reducing and Citadel adding. For that 301k reduction the Friday close to Friday close was a 12.8p rise, ignoring the likely short addition on Friday. Total reported short is 4.8% or around 7.2m shares.

Buying back 301k on the week saw a 12.8p rise in the price (ignoring Fridays possible short addition not buyback). Those 7.2m short shares may well be offering up a 200-300p discount at the moment. I'm still trying to figure out how they plan to exit without a short on short dash for the exit. The same type of feeling when I held Centrica around 40-50p, which turned out to be just time. Patience. Buffets transfer mechanism. Just my guess and beliefs... do your own research.

Stock up on the popcorn...munch...munch...