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Oh look, we're back to rubbing up against £6 again... as if the underlying value of the portfolio hasn't dramatically changed in the last month. Sigh.

No it's commonsense for a VC to get limited liquidity for a number of reasons.

1. If they'd done what you suggested when Revolut started climbing, they'd have left enormous returns on the table. VC depends on a handful of outsized returns to balance out the companies that underwhelm.

2. An investor like Molten dumping large amounts of shares is a huge negative signal in the market. (hence why companies like Revolut and Iceye restrict secondary sales.

3. Molten's main metric is NAV growth, selling down early limits that

4. But the main point is that Molten will see that there's a a strong probability of a bigger upside, so it's better to hold.

This is good news for Manna:

https://www.businesspost.ie/tech/manna-clears-key-uk-hurdle-for-drone-rollout/

Molten have publicly stated that their policy is to state holdings at discount so they can demonstrate upside when they get liquidity.

The absurdity of the share price is based on two conflicting beliefs held by shareholders:

1) That Molten has an information asymmetry when it comes to their holdings

2) Despite this the shareholders knows better than Molten itself the value of those holdings and so the stock trades at a huge discount.

Point 1 is absolutely true, but that only demonstrates the absurdity of point 2.

Ultimately the problem with Molten's stock is that it's a VC stock owned by people who don't seem to understand VC.

At times this is a genuinely absurd stock. I can't tell if the volatility and rubbish liquidity is because anyone with any sense knows it's a hold and so:

a) Rubbish liquidity

b) Prices get chased down

Absurdly despite a YEAR of good news we're back to 35% discount to NAV.

We need more institutional growth investors, that much is clear. Most of the institutional holders are value investors or somehow ended up with GROW and don't know what to do with it. So they're constantly selling to get out of it. We need institutions that are chasing upside and so will just keep buying.

I've often wondered what would happen if we relisted in the US.

It's easy to imagine a world where European governments require all capable launches to be with a European country. So it's not unreasonable.

It occurs to me that perhaps you should not be investing in a venture capital stock.

Same. I have a very chunky holding and added another 10% yesterday at £5.30.

But EVEN STILL the £6 barrier remains impervious. Sigh.

Absolutely massive round.

Absolutely mad volatility of zero company news. Down almost 10% in the last 24 hours. Bizarre.

Yeah nothing like this. It's madness - especially in absence of any news or indeed wider market activity.

Another day of it: up as high at 520p before settling at 491 on close. Crazy.

Crazy volatility over the last couple of weeks. A few times the price has jumped 5% or more during the day only to fall off by close.

Any ideas why?

Classic Blackrock, never happy to hold.

Chrysalis was always more aggressive than Molten with its valuation methodology. I had this theory that its discount to NAV was much lower because it attracted investors who had more appetite for risk whereas Molten was too conservative and as a result ended up with low risk and value investors who were completely unsuitable for the stock. So any time the share price ticked upwards, they sold off, which kept weighing down the price.

Sometimes it feels like Molten has its own version of the Triple Lock...

Molten's share price will be dragged down buy the more powerful of the following 3 factors:

1. Negative macro sentiment

2. Negative tech industry sentiment

3. Negative company sentiment

Molten's practice is to ensure NAV is the "worst case scenario". Yes the NAV can change but it represents a pretty solid worse case scenario. Even failures like Graphcore sold more or less at NAV.

IMO it's simpler than that - the entry of Saba as a buyer means there's a new institutional buyer that sees longer term growth. Effectively new money is chasing the same number of shares. Molten's fundamentals really haven't changed a great deal of the last few years (really), yes there have been exits in the last year but what the company has been doing operationally isn't dramatically different. The problem is that there was just too much institutional selling which kept dragging the price down. Molten just needs more new institutional buyers to bid up the price.

The maddening thing about this stock is that Iceye is doing what Molten expected it to do all along. This is the case with virtually everything else in the portfolio. Of course it doesn't always work out that way, but the outperformers always overcome the underperformers - that is the VC model.

Molten is always conservative in its NAV valuations so realistically the NAV per share should only ever be seen as the floor price of the stock. The fact the market believes it can second guess this is absurd.