I feel exactly the same way about your last point, I found the...

I feel exactly the same way about your last point, I found the trading quite positive as it showed huge buy interest and all the tricks that come along with it.
Thanks for your post, I found it very illuminating. I haven't traded in an institution so your perspective is very valuable, I've traded with people who have and learned a few things from mainly trading currency and futures markets, and then started to recognise the same tricks and liquidity grabs in the ASX small caps.

I definitely did miss that one that you mentioned, and it makes perfect sense. To push the market down on weak depth and buy it up, ensuring that you are buying more than selling and lowering your average.

I think that instos may take an interest in smaller caps only because with the current inflationary environment, high growth potential small caps could be regarded as an inflation hedge - especially when large cap growth stocks are taking a hit because of earnings erosion. But this is just my opinion only and you are likely right about brokers and funds that specialise in gold, that is definitely more likely in this case. Perhaps they will take more of an interest as the market cap grows, and we are seen as a near-term producer.