announcement is coming!, page-82

Thats a pretty good summary Bilo but the comment "Insto's don't often "play games" in the market (especially at the small end) - but brokers sometimes do" probably ignores one critical fact. The funds draw significant revenue from lending the stock that they manage.

Thats right, the stock that you own via your super sitting in a fund is frequently lent (rented is probably a better term given that are paid a loan fee for it) by the fund managers to those people who wish to borrow it. Borrowing of stock is typically done to short sell. Short selling is typcially done in the hope that you can buy back the stock at a lower price and return it having made a profit.

The larger the amount of stock that you can borrow the greater the chance that your sale of the stock that your borrowed will in itself negatively influence the share price. The largest parcels available for borrowing typically come from the fund managers.

Irrespective of who is actually shorting a stock, its the fund managers who facilitate the practice and profit from it.

Despite my personal feelings on the necessity to allow somebody to sell something that they don't actually own in a market where registered title is important, the above comments are meant to be judgemental. Rather to point out that in the eyes of most small investors the idea of games being played is often tightly coupled with the concepts of selling shares that you down own and entities who profit from failure rather than success. The facilitators are very aware of their participation.

So given the above the question that one needs to ask themselves is: If the funds loan stock knowing that it will be used for short selling and yet know that by default selling of said stock will put downward presure on the asset they have under management and thus negatively impact the other key metrics from which they derive fees, why would they willingly participate without some level of comfort that the position will be reversed in time for the next asset valuation for fee calculation?