re: "If that was the case, we would be a lot higher right now, without the extra shares. The market is funny."
I did say I was having a bit of fun. :)
The problem as always, is perceived value. It's highly variable and mallable.
There's intrinsic value, like with gold or oil. Put a few dollars worth of gas in a farm machine and do in a day the work of 10 horses or 100 people, well, whatever, a lot of valuable work. Seems like that would be a constant, but even items of intrinsic value are subject to supply and demand and, of course, price manipulation. Right now the Saudi's have pretty much total manipulative over control the price of oil. Currently they choose to dump as much as necessary to keep the world price low. They are evidently willing to forego some per barrel profit if it means hurting their geo-political rivals such as Iran, or drive competing producers out of business and into bankruptsy, such as is happening in North Dakota.
Then there is the "Efficient-Market Hypothesis"
"In financial economics, the efficient-market hypothesis (EMH) states that asset prices fully reflect all available information. A direct implication is that it is impossible to "beat the market" consistently on a risk-adjusted basis since market prices should only react to new information or changes in discount rates (the latter may be predictable or unpredictable)." (en.wikipedia.org · Text under CC-BY-SA license)
Obviously that's on shakey ground from the get-go. Is "the market" all available investors acting on all available information? Kind-of true for most large caps. But what about a relatively low float developmental stage company like Anavex?
Is the stock exchange the "market"? Actually, it's what the MM makes of it, "MM" being "Market Makers", or as some mighy say "Market Manipulators" :) The stock price is an artifact or artist's conception of what they think the price should be at any given moment. That's their job. A MM is given special trading priviledges to dampen sudden price spikes either way by providing liquidity. They can "temporarily" create shares out of thin air if necessary. Theoretically, they are governed by how far they are willing to go in the hole. If a big order comes in, they can get overwhelmed after which the prudent thing to do is try to cover, or stop buying, sit back and let nature take its course. You can have a high roller (who also could be a MM) by or sell the whole float. Basically, he becomes "the market". Only he knows what he is going to do next with the stock price. So much for the investment community at large having "all available information". Kind of makes a mockery of all the rules for delaying and reporting insider trading. If they're not an insider, they can pretty much do what they want at any time.
So, in our case, the stock price, present, is pretty much completely disconnected from the true value of the company. It's up to the individual investor to figure out what he (or she) thinks the company is really worth, which, of course, has resulted in some keen message board discussion...
