I am not a chartist, and some came to a sticky end in the 1839 riots in Newport, England, but looking at the volume chart I can speculate that the 'double top' is reflecting the 'fundamentals' and 'market interest' in the AZS story.
The first volume top arose from the market waking up to the potential of a new lithium find from drilling in mid June peaking in early July.
Then a drop off in volume traded as a slow news period waiting for drilling results along with a bit of profit taking to be expected with the big run in share price from much lower levels.
Then volume spiked on the 100m+ Spodumene intersections peaking in mid August forming the next volume 'top'.
Then placement to 'sophisticated investors' took place at $2.40 and price started to come off, usually caused by some parties holding AZS shares and committing to the placement at $2.40, selling AZS shares they hold, down to $2.40 to lock in an 'easy profit' as they know they can replace the sold AZS shares with AZS placement shares.
And as the AZS share price gets close to $2.40, this 'easy profit' selling will decrease significantly.
And if the AZS share price rebounds on good drilling results, say at TA2, the AZS share price will spike up and the 'easy profit' cycle will repeat itself until those parties doing it decide that future gains in the AZS share price will be greater than 'easy profit' or they have sold off a sufficient number of their AZS shares to match the number of shares coming to them from the placement. I would expect this 'easy profit' cycle to continue if the AZS share price spikes until the parties receive their $2.40 placement shares to maintain their pre-placement shares held position.
Obviously, you would not expect the major shareholders with more than 5% of the shares on issue to do this as they would need to make an asx release every time there was a change in their substantial shareholding.
Just call me cynical, but in reality, it would appear you have some parties holding less than 5% of the shares on issue using the above process as they don't have to disclose changes in AZS shareholding to the ASX/ market.
Any parties doing this are effectively carrying out undeclared 'shorting' of AZS against the share position they held at the time of the placement.
As other posters have noted, existing AZS share holders with a very modest share position selling AZS above $2.40 for an 'easy profit' and hoping to recover the same amount of shares sold at $2.40 in the SPP, are cautioned that they may not get all the 'cheaper' $2.40 SPP shares they apply for.
Simply stated, in most cases from my observations, the share price of an ASX listed company, following the announcement of a fund raising with a significant price discount, invariably falls to the share price set for the fund raising. This especially applies to shares of asx companies at the 'junior end' of the resources sector!
I am not against shareholders taking a profit, as for every seller there is a buyer getting the opportunity to buy that share, for better or worse.
But I am definitely against the practice of shareholders taking a placement at a discount to the prevailing market price, then immediately effectively 'shorting' the shares down to the placement price to make an 'easy profit' while waiting for replacement shares from the placement.
The best way for asx traded companies to prevent the above practice, should it be occurring with AZS as I suspect it is, is to issue shares at a price very close to the last trading price before the announcement of the placement/issue.
Apologies for the ramble from a retired long time participant as a "Damaging Director" in the asx junior resources sector.
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