keep the faith, page-14

As I have said many times, I believe that most of the shares for sale are not intended to change hands. They are mostly fake bids. What I have been interested in is finding out roughly how many are genuine. When I was last buying I noted several times (probably 20 occasions) when my buy bid was not filled for hours. As soon as it was filled as series of trades completed up to 10c lower. This occurs when a seller stacks a series of low buys and then fills them from off the board. It may be innocuous in that they are cashing in capital losses for other purposes (I've done the same over the years) or else it is a way of ensuring a lid is placed on the price so that more nervous sellers are induced to part with shares. Either way I wanted to see how many sellers could be attracted when I departed the market. At first it looked like 40-50K was loose available stock but after a few more days it seems to have increased to more than double that so I am happy to attract as many as possible out of the woodwork and buy them as low as possible in advance of the news expected late next week.