It is my understanding that Anonymous House 001, is not a trading house. Every trade has to be registered. A lot of investors do not want anyone to know where they invest and which companies they are investing in or divesting from. Privacy Laws and confidentiality agreements protect them. So to protect the anonymity of the client and the brokerage house when such a person sells or buys, the Stock broker, instead of identifying his house, simply hits the anonymous button and it goes as Anonymous House 001. Every brokerage house does some trades in this manner.
So when I see someone saying that Anonymous House has bought or sold shares, this is not correct. What has happened is someone who wants to be anonymous has bought or sold through a brokerage house somewhere and the broker hits the anonymous button instead of the brokerage house name.
Any listed company can, if I understand the process correctly, upon a payment of a fee, register to find out which Brokerage Houses are doing the anonymous trades but they cannot find out who is actually doing the buying and selling.
There is also what is called a black pool (there are other names for it) where brokers can share buy or sell information without there being actual orders. So if I wanted to sell 10 Million shares of XYZ and did not want that information public as that knowledge alone could depress the price, I let my broker know I have that for sale and the price, then the broker can gradually sell them without disrupting the market or he can arrange a buyer who wants to buy a huge block of them and it all goes through as one trade. It works the same on the buy side.
That is my understanding. Hope that helps.
Without news, as you know, share prices often drift lower. Since the January announcements there has been little news to spark an upswing. Pretty much everybody is waiting for the announcement of drilling permits. I expect a lot of the investors who bought in January are doing some early tax loss selling so they can wait out the 30 days, lock in the loss and buy back in when the drilling permits are announced. By December, and the normal tax loss time, it will be too late as the drilling will likely be underway and the price will have bounced up again. This is possibly why a lot of shares being sold over the past month or so. People don’t have much patience with little news.