Sorry Don, Although I very much appreciate your contribution, I don't agree with ",if the bots went away we would still be at 18-19 cents". The price manipulation I would think would be turning away short term traders in droves.
Why would anybody who has been watching the share price over the last week or so, buy AVZ in the morning if they had been watching the share price. The bots come in and the share price is supressed. I would think that most informed people wanting to buy would take a lower position and hoping that the bots would drive the SP down and hope that there order gets filled.
The bots are affecting the day traders so they look for other opportunities and hence demand drops. Nervous holders are motivated to sell because they can't see the share price progression in the short term even with the announcements so they may also walk away.
So canny investors who are watching the market are not going to purchase in the morning because they know that the bots will drive the SP down at 11ish as you say.
If day or short term traders don't see a way of investing because the bots are supressing the SP then they simply will look elsewhere.
Also I think that the news of the last offtake being issued by Shenzhen Chengxin Lithium Group prior to our ASX announcement made our announcement less relevant, less exciting and more fluffy and I wonder if this effected the SP somewhat.
So what's the answer, what will drive the share price. Will it be a non-Chinese offtake, funding, FID, SEZ or PLS or Europe offtakes.
First of all when you consider the size of the resource and the shares we have on offer then announcements have to be amazing for the share price to spike, "we are that big a resource". The market possibly needs more convincing that we are going to mine.
IMO I keep coming back to one thing and that is if "in a couple of years we are hopefully mining" and we have the largest resource, closest to the surface ect ect and all of the positives have been said before then we should have a higher market cap than say PLS at $3 Billion, particularly after we are de-risked and attracted Inso support.
Every announcement that AVZ has promised is de- risking the project and I would suggest that 5 to 6 times where our share price is now, would be a pretty fair position to be in 2023.
