Anavex Life Sciences Corp (AVXL)

[k9uwa]

MOC Market On Close Orders. 2.3MILLION shares

31 May 2024 As of 16:00 EDT we had 699,000 shares traded by the close at a final price of $4.09. The MOC orders were processed at 4:00PM a total of 2.3Million shares at $4.09 .... later a few more buys were made in afterhours 40K with last price of $4.14

Explanations below as to what is an MOC order is and perhaps some explanations as to why someone would use such an order. I copied them from a couple different brokers.

Market-on-Close (MOC) Orders Info:
A Market-on-Close (MOC) order is a market order that is submitted to execute as close to the closing price as possible.
Summary of NYSE markets (NYSE, NYSE MKT, NYSE Arca) rules for entering/canceling/modifying market-on-close (MOC)
All MOC orders must be received at NYSE markets by 15:50 ET, unless entered to offset a published imbalance.
NYSE markets' rules also prohibit the cancellation or reduction in size of any market-on-close (MOC) order after 15:45 ET.
Summary of Nasdaq rules for entering/canceling/modifying market-on-close (MOC)
All MOC orders must be received at Island by 15:55:00 EST, but may not be canceled or modified after 15:50 EST.

Key Takeaways
A market-on-close (MOC) order is a non-limit market order that is executed at or after the closing of a stock exchange.
Traders generally would place a MOC order in anticipation of a stock's movement the next day.
A surge of MOC orders can create trade imbalances at the end of the trading day.

Many days you see MOC orders at the end of normal trade day. For Anavex most times they are 50K to 100K total orders. Thursday it was a bit more than "Normal" We ended normal trade day Thursday with 539K and the MOC orders were something around 306K shares for a total of 845K. That was considerably about our "Normal". MOST DAYS I see MOC orders of 50k to 70k. Not enough to make anyone wonder Whats Up? Friday was one hellava difference. We went from 699K to 3Million traded shares. So 2.3Million shares traded as MOC Market On Close shares. Undoubtedly this created an Imbalance. So maybe MONDAY might be an interesting day?? I guess maybe we will find out on Monday Morning? This could be any number of things that caused this to happen.

Enjoy your weekend
John k9uwa