Member Info for knot

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...

Chid is a good indicator as to short activity and the timing of pullbacks, so I find it quite interesting. Not at all that I think Chid may be a short or spread trader at all.... each to their own and in a way if we get upset about a contradictory view that we can't objectively argue against Chid has an equally valid opinion. However if it is an opinion that is flawed just because of a blind or lazy view of doing no research then flame on. Free speech matters, however much we may dislike what we hear.

Either way you (Chid) don't seem to like popcorn...munch...munch...

Yesterday it looks as if Citadel Advisors added (or reported a net change) indicating an addition of around 105k shares to the short position, which with todays price increase appears to have cost them around £130k (excluding the rest of the book position). May be day trading, although given the way yesterdays share price oscillated in the day and the volumes, they may have also lost on the new short yesterday on top of today. Citadel last reported position was on the 7th April when they went under 0.5% at 0.46%, so it has been a few days since they breached the 0.5% reporting threashold. Interesting they popped back up above 0.5% now and will be more amusing if todays rise was a different short reducing.

The end of day auction game that the shorts appeared to be using early last week to exit the positions has been run over the last few trading days with today another day that the auction (337.8p) cleared above the last traded price (335.05p), which was also attempted to be pushed down (330.8p bounce at 15:51:09) ahead of the close. The volume for the auction was also a bit chunky at 192k shares. It looks and feels like a larger participant or the momentum has shifted to the point the shorts are getting more exposed to a significant squeeze or one short is still reducing in the auction even with the price increment.

Today I would still think that a short is reducing, although will see with the report at tomorrows close. With Citadel popping up above the 0.5% threashold the reported short position is now 4.92% or 7.4m shares....wow... that short in aggregate lost £962k today.... ouch....

Getting interesting and feeling like squeezy popcorn.....munch...munch...

The starting auction kicked off at 332.6p compared to the closing auction on Wed of 324.8p. May be on the back of Lloyds NIM increasing or the basics that Lloyds has a PE of 11.6 vs 4.3 for CBG. Maybe just a spread play between Lloyds and CBG. Maybe just shorts reducing, who knows....

Market makers then indicating 333p vs smaller off-book trades at 327.8p, so a starting disconnect / wide spread in the market (high uncertainty as to what is going on). My guess would be one short is reducing and a different one stepped in to push down again from the 08:47:35 market maker 1 share trade (£3.42) of 341.6p with the 08:48:49 trade (off-book) of 50k at 337.8p as a possible example of offering the market down rather than a 'buy' as such - be cautious about interpreting the buy and sell tags. The later 09:44:18 trade (AT) of 29.9k at 336.6p potentially being one trade of a short reducing - AT market participant not retail ?

Making for a possible interesting day of two shorts going in opposite directions ?

Conflicted popcorn...munch...munch....

And again yesterday WorldQuant reduced the short by around 135k shares to 0.98% leaving around 6.6m shares (4.39%) as the reported short position as of yesterdays close. Given that the days volume was around 392k shares, it's quite interesting WorldQuant closed out with around a 8-14p increase in price for the 135k (finger in the air estimate effect). Makes for an interesting situation ahead, either a steady bull run has started or some of the shorts are preparing to push down at the CBG results in a few weeks to see what they can flush out to close their positions with. The market seems to look more like the longer side is being more dominant with the intra-day games that are going on, which is leading to the steady rise, with brief derivative levels liquidating out along the way (the current 325p for one).

Just my guess, belief and popcorn...munch...munch...

Did you notice the bid / offer spread at the time these trades went through...

30-Apr-25 / 14:11:17 / 323.60 / 67 / Buy* / 322.80 / 324.20 / 216.81

30-Apr-25 / 14:11:17 / 323.40 / 66 / Sell* / 322.80 / 324.20 / 213.44

Bid 322.80 / Offer 324.20 (the spread being over 1p vs the buy/sell difference of 0.2p)

That's where the buy and sell tags become potentially meaningless, possibly more so than they are given that the market always has a buyer and seller. The instigator of the trade is not necessarily the buyer or seller as such, rather the impatient one out of the two. Sitting on the bid to buy or offer to sell is more like fishing, where you just have to wait a while to get the job done.

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

Caius reduced to 1.18% from 1.24% that they registed on 11 Feb when CBG spiked to around 365p and the shorts piled in... Reducing by 90k shares offset the short added by Squarepoint of 60k shares on Friday. Squarepoint may well be day trading the position.

Today I would not be surprised if more of the short positions have been reduced, although there are still 6.7m shares outstanding, which in the current market balance would appear to be zero change of getting out below the 365p level they last added.

Looks like the end of day game did not work today....

More bank results to come, along with popcorn...munch...munch...

They are holding on to capital at the moment until either they end up with an obvious excess (maybe Winterflood sale anounced in May update) or the Supreme Court rules. Very prudent and very sensible approach, otherwise you end up with even more volatility and exposing the company to being leveraged into a problematic position. Once there is any degree of certainty my belief is that they will perform a buyback while the shares are below 600p because that may make the £200m bond problematic to buyback. The £200m bond also prevents the company from ad-hoc buybacks that are liable to retrospective evaluation as to being detrimental to the value of the bond. My thoughts would be a dividend will only start very small, possibly after a buyback. Otherwise the alternative option is to put all the capital back into the business and accelerate growth rather than just hand it out to shareholders in the short term. Longer term that would or should be far more beneficial to the share price. If your looking for quick dividends you may well have the wrong share. Don't forget capital gains are also taxed lower than income from dividends, so a choice of dividends may also not actually be in the average holders best interest. Given a choice I would say zero dividends and just ongoing buybacks because they are the same as reinvesting your dividend without the forced tax position.

Patience and prudence with the popcorn...munch...munch...

The after market auction at 316.8p with far more volume than was traded in the day may also point to the way the shorts are looking to exit, picking up volumes averaged into the action rather than running the risk of pushing the price up within the days trading. Makes for an exposed strategy as you can only do things a certain way a few times before it becomes apparent what your doing and your then left exposed as a percieved forced buyer. WorldQuant and or other may be getting close to the book limits and being forced out, when looking back at the sharp selloff from around 365p to protect the existing positions (which added more volume or dug a deeper hole).

Reeves may well be looking to just compete with the US after the US pulled a blinder with the Basal 3 rules, leading Europe up the garden path... lol... aint a bearish signal, nor a favourable one for the FCA's long planned redress scheme. I'll wager a box of popcorn on 4 months before FCA sees some mass firings....

Another interesting popcornish day ahead... munc...munch...

Millenium down to 0.48% (was 0.58%), WorldQuant reducing again to 1.07% (was 1.15%).

Those volume difference are approximately, 150k and 120k respectively. That leaves the smaller of the two late trades (circa 0.32%) as either a smaller holder exiting completely or another long adding more. Confirms that another long term holder has added 1% or a very chunky day trader that is going to squeeze the shorts out. Todays trading, lacking volume and ticking up slowly, seems to be a case that no large short is going to add because they know there is not enough seller volume to offset the longs that are building at this level.

Last reported short balance as of the close on the 24th is now 4.49% (4.01% reported plus Millenium).

The closing of 0.18% potentially raised the price by around 10p and there is over 20x that volume to close out, asside from additional longs adding new volumes.

Shorty pop, pop, popcorn... munch...munch...

Could get quite interesting tomorrow, given that those late trade volumes for yesterday would have been in the short report today if they are not otherwise outright breaking the rules..... So that would indicate that a new long had added around 1% yesterday - remember the last ghost trades..... The 300p volumes today could have been from earlier in the day, which if they are a buy as well, it would appear to be full on squeezy time.

Very interesting day ahead for possible popcorn all round... munch... munch...

No change on the shorts yesterday, given the static price open-close, so no big surprise. Today however looks a little different with the distinct decorrelation (to Barc, Lloy and NW) from around 9am. Almost looks like someone had a morning meeting update and came out of that with instructions to either close out or create a new long position. Either way, the steady climb looked more like a larger position trading in/out. Will see on tomorrows report to see if any of the shorts closed out more, otherwise they are getting into a deeper hole. WorldQuant book position may be starting to go negative.

Out of the 5 reporting shorts the last changes for three of them was to reduce the position size, while only two increased. Of the two that increased the short position, Systematica shorted around 273p (10 Apr). Walleye added around 290p (31 Mar). Both additions are now at a growing loss.. and still a 4.67% reported short position.... looking nice and squeezy...

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

Patience. There appears to be a lot of derivative volume at 300p and we are now holding on the other side of 300p for the moment. Will be more interesting as to find out who has the buy side of that derivative volume.

WorldQuant was possibly the reason for the uptick yesterday as they closed some of the position out... reducing from 1.22% to 1.15%. The 300p derivative volumes may have been part of the protection or exit path for the position. Watch short positions for another change. If the WorldQuant strategy is figured out by the others they may ride on the back of the pricing inertia, which may backfire on WorldQuant if they have not applied it to their full position. i.e. we could see an interesting jump up before they fully exit.

Patience with the popcorn... munch... munch...

Looking at the top 25 holdings for CBG via the WallSt summary page I put them into a sheet to have a look at what the net difference was between all the holders. The position updates vary in time reference with quite a few showing positions for 2 Jan 2025, however these also have a change % which is relative to the prior holdings. If you then work out what the net trade difference is, which includes the changes registered on and since 2 Jan 2025, the net difference is only around 11,000 shares. The problem with this view is that for say Kopernik they are a new entrant, however I have assumed a zero difference as they will have pushed the prior no 25 out of the list. What it does say to me is that between just Jupiter and Fidelity adding positions they have offset all of the prior selling. Adding even just half of Kopernik then adds to a net buy for the larger holders since the start of the year. To me that says the much larger holders (compared to the smaller shorts) have far greater confidence in the long term for CBG.

In terms of the trading update, consider what happened last time where the update was taken completely rationally and not at all used as an instrument of uncertainty to move the share price. It's all about confidence and time, not necessarily about the day's random events based on what Trump comes out with next. Even with the Santander move, which should be bullish for CBG given that just by Santander separating the unit off it will devalue and weaken the Santender units ability to finance competitively. Santander are looking for a buyer and I just hope that CBG are not daft enough to buy the unit as an added poison pill in the short term. Would make for a very, very interesting valuation comparison for CBG though.

Calm before the squeezy storm popcorn...munch...munch...

Well, looking at the trading data it looks like someone sold around 100k shares in around 8-9 trades to pull the price back down to 300p in the space of half an hour starting 12:23 from the 308p high and then stopped with the chunky sales around 12:53 once reaching 300p. Looked like someone may have sold just to maintain the days closing level. After close auction cleared 292.8p with 208k shares compared to the last trade at 294.4p.

The other interesting point to note with today was the market may have started off with an auction to find the 299.6p starting point, 22 seconds after the market open. Shortly after between 08:35 and 08:53 the price moved up 5p (from 295p) on the back of just 2,077 shares over 11 trades back to 300p..... and it then took 100k to pull the price back down from 308p to 300p. Market maker tussle with the shorts perhapse.......

Rollercoaster at the ready, popcorn ahead...munch...munch...

"The current sp being under £3 seems to suit the longs as much as , or maybe more than, the shorts?" - If one of the longs, say Fidelity, was to be one of those lending shares to the shorts and while the shorts pushed the price down Fidelity then picked up another 2-3% then yes, some longs may well benefit nicely from the interim help the shorts provide. When you borrow shares to short, your hoping that the lender is not going to buy up even more shares.

The lower share price in a buyback scenario would also work much better starting off from a low point as CBG would be able to buy more shares. Better return longer term.

The reduced share price may also encourage a takeover approach, although CBG may not necessarily seem to favour this going by the structure of the CoCo bond.

That 300p sticky point again.... for now....

Popcorn with a plan...munch...munch...

As per last notification "150,487,543 ordinary shares with voting rights" - this is then split into float (market) and restricted. I'm not sure what the 3m restricted are made up of. The majority is float, open market. Some of the registered institutional holders are also trustee holding companies for other holders, i.e. Barclays, HBOS, Hargraeves, Jupiter may not have a direct interest, rather they are holding those under trust for other owners or within funds that are owned by others, i.e. pensions. This makes the holding records rather mixed as to who is actually doing what.

The detail of holdings in the link (WallSt) are interesting as they list the top 25 by shares and they account for nearly 79%. When looking at the shorts relative to that, none of the shorts have a larger position than the 23rd largest holder, or put another way 76% of the shares are held by larger holders/trusts than the 5-6% of the smaller short positions in total. If there were any serious worries about the future of CBG the holdings would be quite different and much larger short position. Fidelity also added in March the equivalent of a long position representing over 50% of the short position at the time, in one go.....

WorldQuant are the short to watch because they are the only one to have been building progressively until the 11th, even while the market ran against them. They have a book position of around 1.65m shares at around 295-305p (depending on intraday trade price). The unload of Winterflood could be twofold, one it releases cash and cuts costs, the other is it makes CBG more clean for a takeover. How WorldQuant react in the next week or two will be definative in my mind.

All just my opinion, to take it however, do your own research, don't just listen to opinions.

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

It is a little revealing when you have to resort to outright lies within your posts. Another disingenuous post.

"There is a good reason the shorts never left"

Qube Research - Closed out 21 Jan 2025 - original peak 1.81% (closed price 297p)

Marshall Wallace - below 0.5% 28 Jan 2025 - original peak 1.91% (closed price 314p)

Millennium Capital - Closing - below 0.5% 22 Jan 2025

Cubist - Closing - below 0.5% 15th March 2025

Squarepoint - Closing - below 0.5% 7th March 2025

Citadel - Closing - below 0.5% 7th March 2025

Yes, there are others that have added and others that seem more like volatility day trading, however your statement is a complete lie and a lazy one at that. To me it looks like around 300p is the real point where the economics for the shorts breaks down (go into a loss), so will see what happens next week given the fact that CBG is looking like adding another £40m to the cash pile.

Opportunities to divest non core elements of the business at a premium should be welcomed very much like the premium CBG obtained for CBAM. Try googling economics and you will figure it out rather than just being lazy.

Happy Easter popcorn...munch...munch...

Well, timing wise the 1.6m (on the 10th) was the day after the position was declared and may have been a settlement related buy for delivery relating to the position. Not quite a ghost trade.....

Kopernik Global Investors, LLC, based in Tampa, United States - now has 3% as of the 9th April

https://www.tipranks.com/news/company-announcements/kopernik-global-investors-acquires-significant-stake-in-close-brothers-group

This may well have been the cause of the decorrelation during the Trump trade Liberation Day fallout. The position I'm guessing is via US regulatory filings, which have a different and lower threashold to the UK 0.5% (short) and 5% (long). The 1.6m trade (on the 10th) did not appear to register any new shorts, so it may well have been a buyout from another holder or a derivative type short, however it adds positive support. Remember the 1.6m (x2) was around 288p. If this was a short who has an offshore back to back position (unregistered) then the overall short position may be closer to 7%, which is stunning given how the shares are ticking up and reacted during the mild crash recently.

300p Call derivatives (new in last week or so) may well be holding the price back at the moment with repeated pushes to 300p and slightly above, which may just be a temporary time hold as a result, especially with thin volumes recently. These effect are typically what shows up with the ascending triangle type chart if the market is sufficiently liquid and trading normally. This may be starting to show up in the last 5 day chart for chartists to follow.

This may also be the news (or not) that ticked the shares up over 300p slightly ahead of the close, although volumes have been quite thin today.... expect more volatility in the days ahead, rollercoaster up and down again... Watch for any decorrelation from the big 3 banks as this will show new position additions or removals...

Cubist trimmed back the short to 0.49% from 0.5% on the 15th, so another under the radar holding. Leaves the reported above 0.5% holders at 4.74% (note the three recent blow 0.5% changes - Citadel 7th, Squarepoint 7th and now Cubist 15th).

The after close auction (255k) for more volume than was traded in the day and interesting at 295.8p, end of week derivative protection volatility ahead.... ?

What a show to be alive in.... popcorn ahead... munch... munch....

Reading another legal summary https://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/broker-dealer-commissions-uk-supreme-6354987/ the consideration around 'counter-restitution' where recission of the contract comes into play may create a fundamental problem on the proffit the dealer made on the car. Separate to the huge problem where the car is damaged or even written off and claimed against insurance. In order to unwind a vehicle's value back to the date the contract was agreed the interim rental or useage value would have to be determined and that would be a separate issue far more complex than Plevin. Rental or useage including damage done to the asset has an associated value. Balloon payments are also a factor. Recission of the contract would require the physical return of the vehicle at the date of the ruling.... That could, as mentioned briefly in the SC hearing, leave some settlements where the car buyer actually ends up owing more to the lender in a settlement. In a redress scheme there would be no selective optionality that would otherwise make the scheme discriminatory and unfair. This is just another reason why the fiduciary bribery path has critical problems, asside from bending the existing law as ruled on for the last 100 years on bribery and understandings of how a fiduciary duty is defined or created.

As per the lawyer acting for the claimants, he was asking for Hurstanger to be ignored and or declaring it wrong. They need the law to be changed in order to win. This is not about following the existing law as defined and implemented for the last several decades, it's about bending the rules and law to favour free money. Even the CCA argument needs a new Plevin type equivelent ruling because applying Plevin has critical flaws due to the interest rate.

The "disinterested duty" is still misunderstood as per the description within the Supreme Court hearing being that it is just a different wording to define a fiduciary duty under common law. Also, the ad-hoc approach requires no skin in the game and no way back to negotiate the car price after starting the finance step...

As I have said before, read up, add facts, make your own mind up and don't just follow opinions.

Just my belief on the matter.... fiduciary popcorn...munch...munch....