# What does it mean when people only buy one share?



## chatty (23 April 2009)

sometimes I see one share purchased in the cours of sales in comesec.
I don't know why people bother purchasing only a share???
so you have any idea why they do that?


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## UPKA (23 April 2009)

slice orders where buyer/seller puts a total amount then set the slice size (in this case 1), and the trading system will automatically sends out the slices over the specified time interval. normally its used to avoid detection of a large dump or accumulation.


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## nunthewiser (23 April 2009)

usually indicates a crossing coming , gets used as a flag between various parties etc


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## cutz (23 April 2009)

If someone puts in a bid for 999 units, using that as an example and pulls that amount off the ask side which may be 1000 units, then the top of the ask is left with one unit which obviously eventually gets cleaned up and looks like a single unit in course of sales.

Hopefully that makes sense, just another example.


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## jonnycage (23 April 2009)

ive also seen at the pre-open market depth a lot of 1 only shares
trying to jack up or down the offer pricings that you can see... playing the game : )    jc


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## mark_au (23 April 2009)

OR else, its perhaps a very expensive share like what Oracle and Cisco used to be??


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## Bolle (25 April 2009)

This might sound stupid, but it could just be their Dividend reinvestment on a small share holding (say, minimum packet, $500 in something) dividend amount was fairly small, and only bought one new share in the company.  So their total holdings might be something like 30 shares or whatever, but their most recent acquisition is 1 or 2 lonely little shares.  That probably happens quite a lot.


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## beamstas (25 April 2009)

Bolle said:


> This might sound stupid, but it could just be their Dividend reinvestment on a small share holding (say, minimum packet, $500 in something) dividend amount was fairly small, and only bought one new share in the company.  So their total holdings might be something like 30 shares or whatever, but their most recent acquisition is 1 or 2 lonely little shares.  That probably happens quite a lot.




We had a client once at work who had RIO shares, he didn't have enough shares to buy* ONE *share through DRP

Took me and two other accountants about 1 hour to work out where the dividend had gone 
(as we didn't know the client was on DRP)

So yes, 1 share is possible through DRP

Cheers,
Brad


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## nathanblack (25 April 2009)

beamstas said:


> We had a client once at work who had RIO shares, he didn't have enough shares to buy* ONE *share through DRP
> 
> Took me and two other accountants about 1 hour to work out where the dividend had gone
> (as we didn't know the client was on DRP)
> ...




where did the div go? do they with hold the divedend until the holder has enough acrued to buy a share using DRP or they give cash or it just vanishes due to rounding?


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