Broker Data, page-759

Broker data for the remainder of August.

Most interestingly, Virtu, who have negligible gross volume for the year prior, bought 260k shares from August 23rd - 30th. CommSec (retail) was a big net seller of 180k.

Virtu is a market maker, AP for various ETFs, and so I'm fairly sure this is an index arbitrage bet, i.e. they are front-running the inclusion to S&P ASX 300 and/or FTSE Australia 300, which will announce rebalancing tomorrow.

Inclusion to S&P ASX 300 would result in a holding in Vanguard Australia funds of ~1.5% of shares out (~1m shares). See Wildcat below for an example - the fraction of shares out is not exactly constant because of free float adjustment.

Similarly, inclusion to FTSE Australia 300 would result in a holding in Vanguard US Mutual Funds / ETFs of ~2.8% of shares out (~2m shares) - see below again.

I've looked cursorily through the methodology for both of these indices and I can't see any reason why WA1 would be ineligible for either, but e.g. MEI and PDI were both added to the S&P but not FTSE index in March (e.g. WC8 and LRS were added to both).

I'll be posting here less often, so perhaps someone else with BB can provide broker data in the future. The signal-to-noise ratio in this forum has deteriorated markedly, sadly. My gratitude and best wishes to the 15 or so insightful and serious posters I've engaged with - message me on X or SStack if you'd like to stay in touch (same alias).