Coach,

Thanks for your feedback on "Anon." I'm well aware of the fact that any brokerage firm can list the trade under the "guise" of Anon and that multiple houses may utilize Anon throughout the day's trading. And, of course we cannot segregate the trades of the various houses, so, I have to make some assumptions utilizing the "average" buy/sell price.

My real point in my joint posting is that if an entity purchases 10,000 shs of ECU at C$.89 @ 14:03 and systematically places an instantaneous sell order of 42,500 shs of ECU at C$.89 @ 14:03 (see Post 1), then it is likely to be the same entity utilizing some b.s. algorithmic method to "confuse" buyers and lead them to believe that the sellers dominate the action and there is very little chance that they can take the stock higher. And, like you pointed out, it probably encourages "long" ECU shareholders to give up and sell.

Yesterday's late afternoon trading was a joke! As gold broke out sharply and HUI rallied 17 points, everytime ECU tried to gain any momentum, ample supply of stock hit the offer side. Without this cr_p, ECU should have been up 5-6 cents! And to add insult to injury, the Des Jardins market maker filled the following trades in the closing minutes:

For those that don't know, a trade under 500 shares does not affect the stated, current price. So, by breaking up a 1300+ share order into three lots at, each under 500 shares, the closing price of ECU remained at C$.90, not C$.92. I seriously doubt that some retail buyer bid three separate trades at C$.92 in the closing minute, two seconds apart! (I told Altmann to ring his neck over this b.s., because he is probably in cahoots with this short entity.)

In my opinion, these are the types of strategies that the shorts (most likely naked) utilize to cover as quickly as possible without driving the stock higher, making it more costly for them. They may have plenty of time to cover before the merger takes place, but they must be somewhat concerned about the upcoming drill results and how that might impact the stock.