RE:Over 300,000 BidSometimes these are signals that the potential buyer is willing to buy a block at a certain price - eg I will buy 300,000 at 4.45. The order appears and then disappears.
Then it is followed by a seller who is willing to sell 300,000 (or some similar number) at, say 4.54.
The seller, however, cannot put in a sell order at that price without negatively affecting the current market price which is a few cents above 4.54. So instead the seller puts in a similar "buy" order at 4.54. This is a signal from the seller to the buyer that at they are actually willing to "sell" not buy. That order appears but only briefly. The order might stipulate "all or none."
The potential buyer then might appear again with an order at $4.51.
This dance continues or they get on the phone and if they settle on the number of shares, price and sometimes time of trade then a cross-transaction occurs.
Sometimes another buyer or seller steps in and might either complicate or make a three-way trade.
All of this can be confusing for the retail investor. Conspiratorial thinking suggests stock manipulation. Other retail investors may think that these repeated buy orders are a signal that considerable buying is right around the corner. Retail investors might try to get ahead of the transaction and push up the price only to see that the price falls back again because considerable buying did not occur.
After the price settles again, suddenly a large transaction occurs at a price several cents lower than the market price. The retail trading price might briefly dip and then immediately return as if nothing happened. The reality is that the only thing that did happen is a trade has crossed at a negotiated price of say 4.52 for a certain number of shares.
In fact, a good rule of thumb for the retail investor is to ignore big buy order that are 10 cents below the market price or big sell orders that are 10 cents above market price. These buyers and sellers are not interested in dabbling with the retail investor and affecting the current market price. They are just trying to load up or unload in blocks of shares.
This is the method Crawford used to sell his block of shares about 25 cents below market. The buyer of those shares is likely trying to take some profit now that the share price has moved up.
For the institutional investor, the biggest drawback in owning VMD is the inability to sell quickly. The retail market is just not big enough. They may wish to sell to address a portfolio issue (rebalancing, satisfying redemptions, etc) that is totally unrelated to VMD. Because VMD is so thinly traded that is sometimes difficult to do.