"in two trading days involving involving 75% of outstanding common shares, that is clearly a massive dump of the stock by shareholders"
The fact is that the MM's and Hedge funds can sell the same shares over and over while longs don't sell anything.
It's the AI manipulation of the market that allows this.
The entire market is manipulated, but the most valuable stocks are manipulated more.
I disagree with the author of this paper's initial claim that there is "no evidience yet". I believe the huge pump and dump that occurred during the COVID lock up was a way to get government funds given to people and businesses during that time to gamble in an AI controlled market and channel a lot of those funds back to the Street people. The methods and dangers of AI are well described though.
I agree with the heart of your argument. For someone who was knowledgeable about clinical trials, MacFarlane's presentation would have raised red flags. Specifically, for the type of endpoints in those trials, Odds Ratio was a very peculiar choice, especially since there were no numbers reported about how many of the trial subjects crossed the threshold used for calculating the Odds Ratios. The reddest flag of all was the failure to include a comparison of the means for the ADCS-ADL endpoint. I believe these are the reasons Doc328, for example, sold his shares. Furthermore, the December 5 conference call was pathetic and did not confront the doubts raised by critics, including Feuerstein. I think Feuerstein is a schmuck, but not all his criticisms of the top-line results release, IIRC, were bull.
I think, OTOH, you're mistaken in saying 75% of the shares were sold off over those days, as that doesn't account for churn. You're right, though, that it sure showed people were generally not wowed by the CTAD presentation. Had they been, buying pressure would have overwhelmed any supposed short-seller manipulations. On balance, many shareholders dumped lots of shares.
You and I are in the same boat. I bought a lot of shares in the premarket the morning after the CTAD presentation. Having watched the CTAD presentation and read the PR, and lacking critical understanding about clinical trial results, I believed the company had a clearcut route to approval for the most significant Alzheimer's therapy to date, and I wasn't going to wait until the stock skyrocketed during regular trading hours. I paid about $14/share. You've said that "in the end" you "may look really stupid" for not selling on December 5, 2022. Let me tell you, you already do! As do I! I prefer to see us as having been inexperienced in judging trial results, at least when the sponsor says the results are great and all endpoints were met. It wasn't until at least April 2023, IIRC, that I first understood what was wrong with the results, by which time I felt I'd lost too much money to just bail out, and I thought there might possibly be light at the end of the tunnel, at least with Rett.
I believe you and I would make ideal lead plaintiffs in a securities suit based on the CTAD presentation, but I'm not going to volunteer to do that. I wish the lawsuits would just disappear. (BTW, in contrast, I see no basis for a lawsuit based on the Rett results and PRs.)
I also want to include here, that I think Anavex's shot at approval is better than at any previous time since I've been involved. The combination of "Kun Jin's <0.025 p-value finesse," the recent biomarker results such as regarding brain volume, and the FDA's draft guidance negating the import of the ADCS-ADL endpoint, seems to me to make the P2b/3 trial results an excellent basis for approval. I wish, of course, that I'd sold on December 2 or 5, and that I were doing my AVXL purchasing now. I've sold over half my shares, very belatedly and at a big loss, but I still have a substantial amount. If I didn't already own "enough," I would now, in light of what I said earlier in this paragraph, be buying more.