RE:RE:RE:Stock being manipulated??Just to elaborate further on this...
This intense, constant anonymous selling seems to be happening with a specific type of microcap I own, and what makes it so questionable is that most of them are ones with a high degree of certainty in their technical/commercial success - e.g. the more research I do, the more apparent it is they have a legitimate tech that works, that is competitive against all categorical peers, they are partnered with / are endorsed by well known, reputable institutions, organizations and research bodies/universities, they will solve big problems, so on---
And these are the ones getting beat down.
Yet there are also a ton of garbage microcaps, financed no doubt with equally or much less trustworthy means, full of suspect board members, that barely seem to get anything done. Some of these I admittedly owned, even up until recently, until I started committing more time to DD. I still watch them anyway, and this is not happening to them. At most, they were corrected from the Feb 2021 market bubble. They aren't being ruthlessly tanked on literally a continuous basis.
So at first I was thinking that perhaps a number of the financing parties for these microcaps had overextended themselvse during that early 2021 microcap bubble and a few even did private placements (e.g. Willow Biosciences took one I think at somewhere from $1.30-$2.00?), they ate crow, and now they were getting leverage called home and needed to cover it So this meant liquidating or trimming some positions, or repositioning to take other short term opportunities.
But this selling seems to supercede that. As per my above observations - it's only the great microcaps that are taking this. The specific targeting of these companies that are actually achieving a lot.
It looks bad, and some of it is brazen. Another company I own shares in, Sixth Wave, would have huge sell walls appear - sometimes for close to $100k, whenever there was very good news. I actually watched them adding to the ask in realtime as buyers swept in. Anyone with an incentive to let the stock price rise (read: an investor) would allow the bids to stack before selling into them if this was an institution trying to balance their books. This person had no interest in allowing bids to stack at a higher price. IOW, It's irrational selling behavior from the perspective of anyone who is not trying to destroy the stock. This happened several times with Sixth Wave, by the way.
One user (at sixth wave's board) suggested the stocks were being shorted into a private placement, with the private placement being used to cover the short position. Which, unbelievably (according to G&M) is still more or less a legal practice in Canada. I didn't see a massive increase in shares short in the microcaps I have this is happening to, so I'm not sure if I buy this.
I think it is possible that there are behind closed door partnerships or well hidden relationships between companies or firms that are being coordinated to actively sell the price down so that firms can get financing at absolutely rock bottom prices.
E.g. if it is possible one institution is selling to other institutions or arms length . This is why you see both anonymous buyers and sellers. They are playing hot potato so a firm looking to do a PP is not implicated if they have a suspiciously well timed private placement right at the market bottom after a ton of selling by just one or two parties. On thin volume, loor liquidity, obscure stocks with big price gaps, this strategy would be pretty easy.
Either way, these situations would basically be financial foul play. It seems like Canada's market in particular is an absolute gongshow of manipulation, and except to consider the majority of Canada's politicians, if they are aware of it, are complicit or even participatory, I have to wonder how it hasn't become a more hot button political issue.