I'm loath to wade into this debate, but for the sake of potential investors reading this thread, here is my 2c worth.
Looking at the chart,
there is nothing abnormal about the ADN price action. The stock price appreciated 1000% over twelve months, hit an all time high and now it has retreated 50%. Stocks overshoot in both directions. It's a pre-production, pre-profit, blue-sky speculative stock that ran up hard in a hot market. It is perfectly normal for traders to short such a stock under those circumstances.
The price action is perfectly normal.
The yellow line is the 200 day moving average. I like to show it on my charts as a reminder that prices tend to revert to the mean. It is a very useful technical indicator for longer-term trend trading.
Below is chart showing approx two years on a log price scale.
Whether there has been any illegal trading activity is beyond my knowledge but more importantly, it's not worth my time to worry about to be honest, because, t
he price action in ADN is perfectly normal. The world is full of crooks who lie and cheat and put their dirty pizza boxes in the neighbour's yellow bin.
I pay ASIC two lots of company registration fees per year and it's just an indirect tax because they don't do shit about anything. They actually fined one company many years ago because I didn't notify them of the death of a director (my father) within the requisite time period. I've got shares in a de-listed public company that hasn't even provided shareholders with any accounts or any communication for two years! ASIC knows who the company secretary and directors are but what have they done about it? They've probably been sent a fine!
All this carry-on is just noise. Look at the chart and/or assess the fundamentals and trade or invest based on your needs. It's not just ADN either. I hold a lot of more speculative stocks and the beetling and babbling about market manipulation on HC is rife. Examples from my portfolio include PNV (talk about a volatile stock, that has been subject to short campaigns, but what are you going to do about it, buy, hold or sell.), CUV, CRO. CRO was interesting because HC members started complaining about all the up-rampers a couple of months ago, it was out of hand.
PNV is an interesting stock to compare because it has been subject to much bigger short campaigns that ADN. There was a call on that stock board by one member to email the Treasurer demanding action. Really? I think it's far more important as an investor to decide whether to buy, hold or sell rather than go complaining to the treasurer because you're not happy about the stock price, but everyone has to decide their own strategy.
Yes there are down-rampers on HC. Just ignore them. Block out the noise and focus on the signal. Buy and hold or trade the swings.
In conclusion, I repeat my argument that
the price action in ADN has been perfectly normal. I think investors would be best served by analysing their trading in the stock on that basis.
[edit]. BTW, I bought a parcel of MEP this morning.
(20min delay)