Why is it excessive or why are they trying to hold it down?I...

Why is it excessive or why are they trying to hold it down?

I believe its excessive as there are some 500k at 23.5 which really could be hit easily right now if the sell orders at lower levels werent there. I mean, would most retail holders sell 500k shares below the 52 week high after really only having positive news and progress events happen? No. Not when they could easily get 22.5.

Why would they hold it down, well to accumulate at lower prices of course.
They know that the permitting is the biggest market catalysts followed by BFS, technical report and a DFS... which are big price sensitive announcements. Then following a DFS is when you would likely see finance evolve. I mean its a huge 2 to 3 months ahead for this company.
All locked away behind one more permit. Someone said recently that the road permitting wont unlock a massive jump in price. And I agree. We dont want that. But it will be the ignitor for a series of value adding events, which is a better way to slow the profit taking to some point.
There had been some regular short activity over the past month too, which for the moment appears to have stopped (although im suspicious of todays activity) which i believe is a sign that the stock has become too risky to borrow against.

All my opinion only of course, as we very rarely find out for sure.