Ann: Intiger Group - Clarification, page-486

I completely read that as "Mr. Meerkat determines the share price". I need more coffee.

Yep, I agree in the short term. Traders gonna trade.

However, what needs to be looked at is that the market is simply a timeline of investors (people) making decisions.
In that timeline we can look forward as well as backward.
We can also see people entering and exiting.

What drives the decisions for an investor to hold/sell is their own timeline and the value they wish to gain.

If you look at short term traders first, they don't care for long term goals etc.
They want volatility in a market because this gets them their profits if they are smart enough to realise the trends etc.
They largely won't affect a price in the long term unless they do so intentionally.

This trading provides liquidity for those traders with a longer term goal in mind.

Take for instance the more medium term holders.
They believe they can get in at the bottom, hold, then sell out at a spike when something goes right.
This group can indeed affect the price if they decide that they've all had their fun at the same time and sell off to realise profit/stop loss.
This affects share price due to new over-supply on the market which needs to be taken up by new investors.
If it isn't, then the share price drops as we saw the other day on the back of a "lacklustre" announcement.

Long term holders are those that affect the greater portion of the price.
Again, all of these holders have differing timeframes in mind but over the long run, peaks and troughs in price are largely irrelevant.
These holders soak up most of the supply of the shares and make it difficult for the other two groups to get their hands on the remaining shares.
The more long-term holders there are, the more difficulty there will be in the market to get a hold of the shares.
This obviously will drive price up quicker.
If long-term shareholders decide enough is enough and they sell, then the price begins to unravel as we've seen the last few days.

But the only thing needed to turn this around is more investors in the "long-term" holder phase.

My argument is that this conversion of non-investors/traders/medium-term investors into long-term holders is brought about by the success of a business.

Everybody wants to make money. When an opportunity for long-term wealth comes along, it can convert all of these types of investors into a long-term holder. The promised future success of the business on a grand scale as IAM are setting up for should sway investors to hold.

IAM cocked this opportunity up with the last announcement.
Such is life.
The fact of the matter is that it won't change their business.

If promised revenues come in and they start hitting targets, that should be enough to convert investors to long term holders.

Wait and see.