It's a lazy, but normal, assumption to think that because the SP...

It's a lazy, but normal, assumption to think that because the SP rose prior to an announcement there's a leaky ship. But if you look at the history since July 2023 when the SP was around $0.45 I don't see anything suggesting this is a leaky ship. Anything but really....

Sure, the SP rose last Friday - over 10% from $3.62 to $4.08, but that was only on 243K shares swapping hands - a mere 0.50% of 1% of SOI. And today's trade was only on 296K shares (from 529 trades). And of those 529 trades - 284 (54%) were for less than $500 - so that's generally not retail, but broker inspired 'bot' trading. Some of those 284 trades would have been residual trades, i.e. those trades not fulfilled and carried over to the next trade, but that wouldn't account for many.

The next big chunk - 215 trades - were for amounts between $500 and $10K - which is more your retail turnover. I haven't checked whether there were any recurring numbers in that lot.

Then if you look back at the last years announcements - the TH that finally dropped the WLA (yeah OK provisional) on 11 April - the day before had a T/O of 104K shares and the SP ended flat at $3.20. Obviously no claim of a leaky ship for that announcement.

Then on 21/5 we had the FY24 results release. No notable movement in the days prior, but that day saw 961K T/O and the SP went from $3.35 to $3.77. No 'sell on news' that day, but I guess that theory only works when the SP is pumped prior to an announcement?

Then we had the FY25 guidance released on 1/8 when 244K shares traded and the SP went from $4.13 back to $3.77. The day before you could say the SP was pumped (on only 205K shares traded) from $3.76 to $4.08.

None of the above means jack really when you have minimal SOI of 48M because only a slight bit of interest will drive the SP higher quicker than a HC induced pump session (but that generally only works on a billion + SOI penny stock)...

My point? A pump session based on leaky info would entail more than a mere 200-300K T/O which is what we are seeing here, in fact we are seeing more shares traded once news drops. My view is that FND is on a number of radars and the tiniest whiff of news will result in a 'run' on the SP.

Based on that I'm looking forward to the announcement that NS has been suggesting is 'highly advanced' and that will add 5,000 to 10,000 ATMs (we have 21K currently) to our portfolio by the end of the FY (plus the one that says we have lodged our SAR for the full WL licence).