So, we have top 20 individuals/SMSFs increasing their holdings....

So, we have top 20 individuals/SMSFs increasing their holdings.
Most probably a net increase under the big nominee companies (the smaller of the two HSBC custody nominees has dropped out of the top 20 so can’t tell for sure).
The big nominee companies would be mainly used for the sophisticated investors accounts. So not a large amount of movement there.
Morgan Stanley Australia in this context is probably an institution and they have off loaded 8.95M shares.
At a high level the top 20 holders held 249,699,933 shares on 23/8. On 14/12 the top 20 holders held 241,971,739 shares. A net leakage of 7,728,194 shares.
On the 23/8 the 20^th top holder had 3,387,273 shares, on 14/12 the 20^th top holder had 3,867,473 shares. This shows the gap between the top 20 holders under 10M shares has narrowed.

Since the last CR at 16.5c ~ 90M shares have changed hands one or more times.
On the numbers above the top holders (except for Morgan Stanley Australia) have not contributed greatly to this churn and subsequent SP fall.
The bulk of the sellers are clearly outside of the top 20 holders.

Let’s assume CS Fourth Nominees account holders sold out completely (theoretical worst case). Adding that to the other top nominee reductions plus the Mogan Stanley sell off gives a total of around 20M shares.

To generate the additional 70M churn, a significant number of relatively smaller holders must have reduced their holdings or exited completely. This would be a pretty amazing/odd example of herd mentality where the front of the herd has hardly moved but the middle pack have run away!



It would be interesting to see an updated distribution of the number of shareholders now on the register to confirm this.