Tale of the Tape

With the market just closed, and only 2 days to go, share activity can be summarised as follows:

CIMIC purchased 6,000 shares
Other purchased 10,072,044 shares

It would appear we have a buyer in the market at the moment. The ASX opened today and there were about 3.5 million buyers at 15 cents. By lunch time these were filled leaving the market depth with CIMIC buying at 14.5 cents and sellers at 15 cents. There was a real chance that CIMIC could have picked up sellers who wanted to exit but what we have seen is buyers or a buyer come in and consistently buy at 15 cents. Only once did it drop back to 14.5 cents for a small parcel of 6,000 shares.

I am a little sceptical that a genuine buyer has come into the market at this stage of the bid. It would not surprise me if a UBS or CBA has moved in on the expectation the price will fall on Friday so they can start loaning shares to the shorters. We may never know as they would need to purchase 60+ million shares to get to the 5% substantial shareholding point and I do not expect that sort of volume will occur between now and the end of trade on Thursday. Time will tell.

CIMIC is unlikely to be a buyer if the price falls as they are bound by acquisitions of no more than 3% in every 6 months and they just increased their shareholding by about that amount as part of this bid.