Exactly, it's excessive liquidity is in a sweet spot for algorithmic manipulation, forever trading a few pips in an out forever to pick up huge numbers of small profits. A.I. writers love these stocks with billions of shares out because the algorithms have huge amounts of data to work with, and the risk for the algorithm company is far less, whereas with more limited liquidity, a black-swan event (whether it's good or bad) is a much higher risk for algorithms and can screw up their code, or at least, leave then hanging with no action to take, so they are often withdrawn.
I too am not a great fan of consolidations, but the more algorithms and A.I. trading we get, the more (potential) benefits a consolidation has. I think this is why we get huge numbers of algorithms on the ASX, for instance, a stock like PLL is dual listed, on ASX it has 1.4 billion shares and algorithms attack and manipulate it, it's other listing is the NASDAQ and it has only 130 million shares and the algorithms won't touch it, the number of trades are much less, but those that occur are meaningful because the 1 to 100 ratio means the USA stock is $26, the ASX stock is 35 cents, and algorithms love billions of shares at low cost because they are easily manipulated and low risk.
This needs a consolidation unfortunately, but I really don't see what else can be done to stop the algorithmic manipulation year after year, because the government of Australia doesn't have the guts to pass laws that would give us a fair and equitable stock market, and outlaw A.I. algorithms.
One day someone will write a global stock exchange, where it's free for all companies to list, and algorithms are banned, and companies are paid a small percentage for every transaction in their stock, except that when this happens the financial moguls of the world, and global mafia, and all governments, will shut it down and the designers and founders will mysteriously disappear, probably with cement pads tied to their feet while they are dropped overboard in a deep ocean somewhere.
Welcome to the world of global finance.
Gw
SXY Price at posting:
34.0¢ Sentiment: Buy Disclosure: Held
