Sculping asked the question regarding Friday's trading. As a retired broker, here is your answer.

1. Anon is used by multiple houses for many different reasons. Many larger investors and houses use Anon by default.

2. The probability that there is manipulaiton to any scale, the Chinese are driving it down, someone is trying to scare the market, there is a vast right wing / left wing consipiracy, or a host of other theories is virtually nil.

3. You have a stock in SLI that trades at a very high valuation relative to its peer group and stage of development.

4. You have an investor base that constantly needs "news" to keep the hope alive, the story going, the momentum going, etc.

5. Because of reasons 2-5, you have volatility. A lot of it. Since you don't have any major institutions following you or big shareholders, you easily have days like Friday.

6. The large trading at the end of the day was either a) capitulation by a larger shareholder; b) someone who transferred brokers where the new broker was "cleaning up the portfolio" to reallocate to the stocks he follows, or c) a margin call. It felt like "c" but that opinion and $10 will still only get you a small coffee at Starbucks. It looked like forced selling by a house at the end of the day.

The stock price of a company gets "manipulated" when the company is about to do a private placement and prospective investors sell on the open market to participate in the PP (as has been done here on multiple occasions). The company is no where near a buyout in its development and I would be quite surprised if they would even entertain an offer at this standpoint. Why sell before you have any real idea what you have?

As with pretty much any exploration company, there is only so much "news" available. They are either a) setting themselves up for a major investment or buyout (which the China trip was in my opinion, but that will take a year although they definitely started at the top) or b) drill results. Since per multiple reports here the company is waiting until they complete some amount of drilling before releasing results, that could come next week, next month, or next quarter even. Since 98% of retail investors don't have any idea what a good drill result looks like anyway, they are probably compiling results sufficient enough to warrant attention from very large investors (China again plus others) and that will make sense to retail investors.

Larger or more sophisticated investors will wait for days like Friday to buy in and rarely if ever will buy in on the "surges" but will wait for the "craters". Either way, until results come out, it will be a "retail" dominated play as larger investors or groups will pay more for the assurances results imply vs the wildcatting currently occuring. Not to say many won't take up a position, but the results are the catalyst for real investment dollars outside of the traditional "retail" market.

My only suggestion to management, directors, et al would be to hold a conference call where they state in no uncertian terms that they are drilling this property for the next year, will release results in bulk when it can make sense to normal people, they expect that to occur every month, every quarter, semi-annual or whatever, and investors should expect huge volatility until then. Then tell everyone to put on their big boy and girl pants, save their dollars for ugly days, and pick up as much as they can during the drilling period.

Now back to lurking...