RAC - Charts & Price Action, page-11382

I think there's valid points on both sides of this argument. I agree with @johndprent in that BG selling is not the sole reason for the share price being where it currently is. We do have a problem with buyers coming on board and with the liquidity of RAC overall. I've posted on this in the past, but for example today, once you account for IMU having ~3.5x our market cap, our relative turnover in dollar terms was 10% that of IMU, and absolute turnover was 2.8% of IMU ($200k vs $7.2million).

I think at least one reason for our low liquidity is that we have a large proportion of shares in the hands of "sticky longs" so that the actual tradeable float of shares is much lower than the total shares on issue would imply. I also expect this problem has gotten worse lately as "sticky longs" appear to be the ones accumulating shares at these prices, which will only serve to further lower liquidity. So I think we are all (myself included) a part of this problem.

I believe this low liquidity is a significant thing that is holding buyers (especially buyers in size) back. I think a large buyer or fund would find it difficult to accumulate a sizeable position in RAC (e.g. high hundreds of thousands to a few million shares) on market without significantly pushing up the share price. They would also have the reverse problem if they tried to unload a significant position. This may lead anyone in this position that is interested in RAC to either rule it out or to hold off on buying until they feel they have no choice but to do so (i.e. may need some genuine FOMO to change it).

Where I disagree with John is that I do think BG's selling does have a sometimes significant negative impact on the share price, as well as on buyer sentiment. Last year BG's selling seemed fairly passive, but I feel that recently it has become more aggressive, constantly hitting the bid and pushing the share price lower in order to increase liquidity and the number of shares sold. This negatively impacts sentiment on the stock and impacts buyer confidence. It reduces or removes the incentive for anyone to buy the ask or up their bid for fear of getting their order filled and then price pushed down significantly lower. Thankfully, in the last couple of days that pattern seems to have changed, though how long this will last we don't know.

Yes, there will still be sellers when BG is gone, but there may be 15-25% less volume available at "current" prices each day. Also, those remaining sellers may not feel a need to reduce their position so aggressively and instead be happy to sit their order at the ask and wait for it to be bought. That in itself won't help our liquidity problem, but I believe that it would go a long way to improve buyer sentiment and confidence in bidding up the share price, which in turn would help to create liquidity in a positive way.