Hi nursery,
I have been taking a very close look at trading in TAS over the last few weeks, in an attempt to understand what the heck is going on.
IMVHO all these BOT trades are designed to keep the SP in a very tight range. Considering the very small amount of volume/value in TAS this week, and particularly today, these BOT's are certainly not operating just for day-trading profits. If they are, they have picked the wrong stock i.e. they should be trading in a stock with more lquidity (but not too much, as their manipulation and thus control of the SP would be more limited).
In order to find out if these BOT's are trading between themselves, I put in a small order to sell some TAS shares on Monday and again on Tuesday this week. Each time I got my fill, it included lots of these extremely small BOT parcels. Therefore, I can tell you that these BOT's are definitely not day-trading between themselves.
Therefore, there must be another reason. My suggestions are as follows:
1. By keeping a lid on the SP, they can build a decent position in TAS over time at cheap prices. Having said this, due to the lack of volume in TAS, this must be a very long term strategy i.e. it will take several weeks if not months to build up a decent position of say 5 million TAS shares, which even then, isn't really a really large position.
2. By keeping a lid on the SP, this ensures that TAS (the same would apply to EDE) would be in a difficult position when it comes time to try and raise cash to fund exploration at Pernatty i.e. a low SP means TAS would have to issue 33.33 million shares at 3 cents to raise A$1 million. If such an issue was done at 5 cents, TAS would only need to issue 20 million shares. Although TAS's cash burn is currently very low, TAS will probably eventually have to have a CR in order to explore Pernatty, and in order to have enough working capital to pay wages etc.. This brings me to point 3.
3. It is a distinct possibility that these BOT's are keeping a lid on the SP, in order to keep TAS under severe financial pressure, which is all part of an overall plan to takeover TAS. TAS are very attractive for two reasons at the moment i.e. firstly their 36% direct share in EDE, and secondly their JV with FMG to explore Vulcan. Given the fact that at EDE's current SP of 3.4 cents, TAS should be trading at 4 cents alone, this means that the Vulcan JV with FMG is currently valued at less than zero. Given the enormous potential of the Vulcan JV with FMG, and the fact that FMG are making excellent progress with their exploration program at Vulcan, despite the COVID-19 crisis, the value of TAS's Vulcan JV with FMG should now be steadily increasing. This is simply not being currently reflected in the TAS SP. It is probably also worth noting that we are now 6 weeks into the new quarter, which means that a progress report about the Vulcan JV could come out out any time. Hence, TAS are currently very undervalued and thus ripe for a takeover.
I would appreciate your thoughts on why we currently have highly unusual BOT trading activity in TAS.
Thanks and cheers.
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