Price goes down = instos bad.Price goes up = instos.. bad?You do...

Price goes down = instos bad.

Price goes up = instos.. bad?

You do realise that institutional holders can just as easily position themselves to profit on negative or positive SP movements. They're bound to also be playing both sides of the coin to some degree.

It's a cognitive bias on your part to constantly assume they only want the company to fail and to undermine the SP. They are not responsible for the long term direction of the SP. They only want to profit off that direction whatever it is.

It all comes back to the company fundamentals and performance relative to the market conditions and relative to expectations. This dictates everything else, including the buying and selling of both the instos and the regular folk. Instos are just one or two steps ahead, which gives them a potential advantage, but also doesn't mean they are all powerful or infallible. Plenty of times they've gotten A2M wrong.