In Thursdays market the S&P 500 rose 0.4% and Toronto rose 0.1%.
Melcor rose 3.0% to $23.90. Volume at 21,500 shares was a little higher than normal. It’s a somewhat thinly traded stock. The value traded today was about $514,000. And lots of days it might trade only $100,000 worth. By way of comparison, Royal Bank traded about $144 million worth today and Stantec traded about $9 million worth. Melcor is thinly traded but it’s not incredibly thin. It has enough trading volume to suit the needs of most retail investors. One simply has to be a bit more cautious in buying and selling to not simply put in a market order as the price can move even on a few hundred shares bought or sold. It’s best to put in an order at a specific price (a limit order).
About the only time I worry about really thinly traded stocks is that I would not put an extremely thinly traded stock on my list because in that case a few buys from my subscribers could push the price up. I never ever engage in trying to push stock prices up. I try to predict which stocks will rise (on the basis of fundamentals). I would never engage in promoting a stock in the hopes of causing it to rise. I consider that to be unethical even if the stock truly should rise. It’s definitely unethical if a stock is not worth much and someone tries to push the price up just so that they can sell at a profit. Always be cautious is someone is promoting a very tiny company or a very thinly traded stock. Those are prime candidates for “pump and dump” schemes.
I was a bit surprised when Royal Bank rated Melcor a Buy this Spring. With their many thousands of brokerage customers I would have thought Melcor would be too thinly traded for them to rate it.