I have often wondered if accumulators generally try to push the...

I have often wondered if accumulators generally try to push the SP down by dribbling sales in small parcels at a loss. Large sellers may do the reverse. As a boy in the 1950's I noticed when trapping sparrows that birds were wary of going into the trap. Individuals would dart in, then dart out with a morsel. After a while one would not dart out, and start hogging the bait, soon to be followed by another, and so on, thus allowing a bunch to be caught in a single trapping. Transacting large parcels of shares may be optimised by behaving like successful sparrow trappers, or fishermen who use burley (“chum” in the language of North Americans).

A large buyer with a cooperative broker could sell and buy back in driblets, and pounce on other low-price offers for sale. This way, the low-price sales would only cost the brokerage fee, which could be very low pursuant to the arrangement cut with the broker. The parcels thus accumulated may be those from shareholders who are not traders, but who need to sell for some reason, so these would be larger parcels than the dribs and drabs.

The above is just the product of a musing mind – I tend to buy and hold shares as an individual, and occasionally sell, so I do not know what happens in the minds of traders, shorters, hedgers, instos and the like.