We have somewhere around 50 million shares in the public float, everyone knows that. We also know the likes of Eastern and DM have not been selling to date, nor any of the other insiders or beneficial owners.  That leaves the 50 million odd shares, they're the ones being shopped around...bought and sold, plus whatever shares have been borrowed and sold back into the market short...and that's not much, only another 250K or so.

I don't know if anyone has any current limit orders with their shares on offer....I don't.  But even if I did, I wouldn't be selling directly to buyers anyway because this isn't an auction market.  All sales pass through the Broker Dealers making a market in RVX.TO....and they have to quote a bid and ask and quantity, even if they don't have any shares to sell or any interest in buying, that's their role.  

And there's the rub in my opinion.  

Those 50 odd million shares aren't sitting on a shelf at Wal-Mart with a price tag on them saying "$2.00 locked and lowered". The shares in the public float are held in brokerage accounts, by investors both big and small.  And my read of the consensus opinion here is that most of us, (I am included) believe them to be much more valuable, perhaps even exponentially more valuable.  

So what's a Broker Dealer charged with making a market in shares of RVX to do?  As mentioned, he's required to quote both a bid and ask and quantity on both sides, the amount of shares he's willing to buy or sell and at what price.  But if the vast majority of available shares are being tightly held by people who think that instead of $2 or so, that they're worth $5, $10....possibly $20+ per.  What's an MM to do? 

A Market Maker can satisfy any buying there is by going short, MMs don't even have to make positive determination that the shares are even available to be borrowed.  MMs in their function of providing liquidity where none (or very little) exists are exempted from the positive determination rule and can short naked.  In point of fact I strongly suspect that most if not all of the 250 odd thousand shares that have been shorted up to April 30th are due to this type of activity.  

But at the end of the day I don't see us going anywhere until the liquidity issue is resolved.  Sure buyers can storm in, but if there aren't any shares available on offer from actual shareholders, then MMs imo can simply satisfy that buy side interest and then walk the PPS down again to quelch any rally.  Without liquidity I don't see any rally having legs.

I view RVX as very ineffecient right now....and I suspect that there are some MMs who would probably agree.  The stock market is a zero sum game at the end of the day, one side gets shares (the buyers) and the other sides gets $$$ (the sellers).  You can't have 1,000 shares and $2,000.....if you want the shares you have to part with cash, and if you want that $2K you have to say goodbye to the 1,000 shares.  

And on a final note, some brokers won't let you place a limit sell order that's too far removed from the current price....so those of us thinking we might let some shares go for say $5 or so....some can't even put that order in.  

Anyway, enough rambling....its the stock market and it functions as it functions.  Some worthless speculative stocks get run up for huge gains because of liquidity imo.  While others like RVX with genuine promise languish because of a lack of liquidity...that again is imo.

A final final note of thanks to BDZ for pointing out the very real possibility of BETonMACE failing....despite the 3 + recommendation from the DSMB there is still the very real possibility that the trial could be halted.