30 june financials out., page-12

My mistake, apparently the Top 20 is correct as at 12 Sept....shares I hold in a funded CFD account were held in a different name to what I expected.

I've just returned from a break from the markets to do a little trekking in Nepal, so I missed the discussion here re movements in the Top 20, and the share price being manipulated, or not. FWIW, and without getting too stressed out and ruining my holiday mood, here are my thoughts on it:

There's NO doubt in my mind that over the last few months some parties have been intent on shutting down any potential price runs. What their motives are, who knows, but if APG didn't have cash my first thought would definitely be that it was a concerted effort to subdue the price to facilitate a nice cheap issue of new shares to the usual "private investors". Let's hope that's not the case. I did email Nick recently and he replied that "No capital raising is anticipated at this time"...how long "at this time" incorporates, I have no idea.

As far as the changes in the Top 20 are concerned, really to get a true picture you would have to compare a Top 20 from after the January 2011 cap raise, to a current one. I'd be very surprised if a swag of those shares issued at 3.5c weren't used as nice trading fodder for some living expenses.

I think it was jwt who mentioned that some major shareholders holdings had diminished but only to be transferred to one of their trust, super or holding accounts or similar. There are a few ways that this could effectively be done: 1) by initiating an Off Market Crossing or Transfer, or an on market XT where the shares don't effectively hit the market depth, but are crossed by your broker at the current price. A scan of the course of trades over the last few months show that trades of this type were basically non existent... or 2) shares are simply sold from one account to the other on market, ie one puts a buy/sell in at one price and then sells/buys into that order.

When doing this I suppose there are 2 choices...place your sell at a higher tick and push the price up into it with your buy (and hence give the appearance of market strength), or put your buy at a lower tick and sell down into it (and give the appearance of market weakness).

No prizes for guessing which direction almost all recent on market crossed trades have gone.

Again, who knows what the motives may be. It could be, as has so often been mentioned, a concerted attempt to depress the price...it might be part of a long term tax minimisation strategy.......who knows.

As far as pump and dumps, ramping etc is concerned. We all know it happens everywhere...here it's just a little more obvious at times than in some other stocks. In my opinion all you can do is look for the obvious signs (long lost gurus returning, etc), and then be prepared to follow the price action and not the story, for ascertaining when you hit the sell button. If you're in for the long haul, surely you still have a well defined stop, based on sound money management, and then you can ignore all the noise, and wait for things to pan out as you hope they will.