the market is clean...what?, page-36

Hey, antibody, you raise some points that warrant some rational response, and in the interests of balance and realtiy, I'm happy to oblige.


"machinations used by the big end of town to manufacture an advantage but still avoid going to jail. "

The reasons they don't go to jail is because it is perfectly legal to maintain shareholdings below certain arbitrary thresholds so that people don't know wether you are selling (or buying, remember....don't forget this gets done in order to not signal buying as well, a fact you patently refuse to acknowledge)

And anyone can participate in the derivatives market, even you and me and mums and dads like us (indeed many do), in order to optimise their returns or to reduce their risk. It is a capital market practice that is many hundreds of years old.

These may indeed be smart practices, but they aren't, as you blithely allege, "questionable" or "corrupt" (absent by, possibly, through allegation by those who aren't smart enough to make use of them)


"ASIC currently has insufficient funds to properly monitor suspect questionable practices in the finance, banking and broking end of town."

I'm sure they don't, but I never disputed that for a minute.
The point being disputed here is the evidence, the proof, that MSB stock is being manipulated. The answers I get to this question are vague references for me to sit and watch the individual trades, the daily volumes, the share price momentum.

And my response, every time, is that I don't know what I am looking at when I watch the individual second-by-second ticks. And I put it to you that no one does. It is in most likelihood, perfectly normal buying and selling by a vast number of market participants with varying legitimate motivations and objectives, just as there are higher and lower trading volumes at different times of the day, and on different days for ALL stocks.

The burden of proving anything rests not with those that make no definitive claim; it rests with those who have the very high conviction in their assertions.

That is the normal order of things.


"And this is just one very basic strategy that is used to sell without anyone knowing. Believe me, there are many more".......without anyone knowing! hidden from scrutiny!!!

So what? Who says you have do have access to the selling (and BUYING too, remember? Don't forget the BUYING component) intentions of other investors. It's like getting miffed because I don't tell you what I am buying or selling. That's a matter for me only, just like its a matter for all investors, institutional or otherwise.

And once again, I'll stress that the practice of privacy when it comes to trading by institutions not only applies to SELLING. They are also secretive when it comes to BUYING as well, so I don't know why your default thinking is that it's just a "questionable practice" exclusively on the part of sellers.


"The whole question of manipulation viz Mesoblast revolves around the central issue of short selling - a strategy invented by financial engineers for better or worse, but in no time corrupted to accommodate ruthless manipulation and exploit less sophisticated shareholders"

No, I'm afraid short-selling cannot be explained as the cause of MSB"s share price lows.

The fact is that short-sellers at some point cover their shorts (either because they choose to because they've made enough money on their short position, or because the short position becomes excessively large in the event that the share price falls even after they've stopped short-selling), so that at any given stage the people who were short-selling last week, last month, last quarter or last year, will be today's - and tomorrow's buyers.

Over time, short-selling and short-covering neutralise one another. Over time, mind. And for MSB, the timeline over which it has been on a secular downtrend is more than sufficiently long to satisfy that condition.

Have a read of some Bloomberg data I posted on another MSB thread entitled "msb the heavyweight".

There you'll learn - like I did - that despite shorters being NET BUYERs over the past week, the share price has still fallen, so there are some other causal factors.

By way of extending the exercise for robustness, I have actually gone back to the start of this calendar year when the share price first started falling. Back then the short interest was 19.217m shares, compared to the latest data that shows short interest at 04/06 of 20.442m shares.

So that's an increase in the net short position of 1.225m shares. That equates to just 0.38% the company's issued share capital, and if you compare with just the issued stock that is considered to be free float, then that change in the short position rises to just 0.66%.

Also, for further context, 1.225m shares is equivalent to a little over 2 days' liquidity in MSB stock.

The impact of shorting, as the facts herein attest, are inconsequential, despite the hysterical platitudes to the contrary.

I think it is safe to say that the collapse in the share price from over $6 at the beginning of the year, to under $4.50 today is not the blame of short selling, as convenient as scapegoat as it may be.


Adam