Liquidity & Technicals

Liquidity & Technicals — Mortgage Advice Bureau (MAB1)

MAB1 trades in pence on the London Stock Exchange and is capacity-constrained for institutional buyers: an ADV of roughly 461k shares clears about £1.2m of value per session at 10% participation, so a 1% issuer-level position takes ~7 trading days to exit. The tape is bearish on a 3–6 month view — price sits 21.5% below the 200-day SMA, a death cross fired on 2025-09-19, and a 12-month string of lower highs has now broken the 506p 52-week low intraday in late March 2026 before recovering. The only pieces of constructive evidence are a positive MACD histogram cross in mid-April and an oversold RSI bounce off ~21 in mid-March; both still need to clear the 50-day SMA at 578p to matter.

A. Implementation verdict — first-screen strip

B. Price snapshot

The shares are within 6% of the 52-week low (506p, set on 2026-03-27) and have shed more than a third of their value over the past year. A beta of ~1.0 understates real-economy sensitivity: this is a UK consumer-credit franchise, and mortgage volumes are themselves the cyclical variable.

C. The critical chart — 11+ years of price with 50/200 SMA

Price is below the 200-day SMA — current 535.5p vs 200d 682.5p, a 21.5% deficit. The full-cycle picture is brutally honest: a slow grind from the 2014 IPO at 152p to a ~625p plateau pre-COVID, a moonshot to 1,500p in August 2021 on the post-pandemic mortgage boom, then a -65% peak-to-trough collapse into late-2022 as rate rises gutted UK mortgage volumes. The 2024 rally to 916p (Jul-2024) failed to break through the 950p resistance from mid-2022, and the chart has been carving lower highs since. This is a downtrend.

D. Moving averages — full alignment

The alignment is perfectly bearish: price < 20d < 50d < 100d < 200d, with each successive MA further above price. The 200-day at 682p is now a multi-month resistance zone; even a 25%+ rally from here would only reach the rolling fair-value mid-range. Until the 50-day at 578p flattens and the 20-day at 562p rolls upward through it, no setup exists for trend buyers.

E. Cross history — three death crosses in two years

Six 50/200 crosses in 36 months means MAs are whipsawing — neither side has held trend long enough for a position trader to compound. That alone is a tell about UK small-cap mortgage names in this regime: low conviction, high reactivity to rate-path news.

F. Momentum panel — RSI and MACD over 18 months

RSI registered an oversold print of 21.9 in mid-March 2026 — rare in this name (last comparable touch was September 2025 at 27). The bounce off that low was real but partial: RSI recovered to 51 in late April before sliding back to 41 today. MACD histogram briefly turned positive 7-Apr through 20-Apr as the spring bounce played out, then flipped back negative on 27-Apr. Combined: short-term momentum is fading after a corrective rally, not building. The most recent oversold extreme produced a 30p tactical move, not a sustained bottom.

G. Volume profile and ADV

Volume has stepped up materially since mid-March 2026 as the stock broke to new 52-week lows. Weekly averages are running 3–6× the late-2025 baseline of ~80–120k/day. This is the classic signature of forced selling — likely fund redemptions or a fundamental holder exiting given the FY25 earnings disappointment. It is not the volume signature of a clean bottom.

The 30-Mar-2026 spike (5.3M shares, 18.7× normal) is the most significant institutional-scale event in the recent tape. It coincided with a single-day +6.7% pop, suggesting a block was crossed near the 52-week low at 506p — a buyer, not a seller. That is an interesting tell for the watchlist case (real institutional money showed up at the lows) but on its own does not establish a bottom.

H. Volatility — running hot

Realized 30-day vol is 45.5% — above the 10-year median (40%) and approaching the p80 stress band (51%). This is materially elevated for a UK financial-services name and roughly 50% above where the same metric stood through summer 2025 (28–35% range). The volatility expansion that began with the September 2025 sell-off has held — confirming a regime change rather than a one-off shock. ATR(14) at ~16.5p means the average daily range is now roughly 3% of price, expensive for any cost-sensitive execution.

I. Institutional liquidity panel

A. ADV and turnover

ADV20 sits 21% above ADV60, which means recent activity has been heavier than the trailing two-month baseline — driven entirely by the late-March/April capitulation volume. Annual turnover of 84% is healthy for a UK small-cap and shows the stock is not "stuck" with deep insider holdings; the float does change hands. Daily-value of £2.6m, however, is a hard ceiling on institutional access — five funds doing £200k each in one session would already represent 40% of total volume.

B. Fund-capacity table — what AUM can hold what weight

Read this table left-to-right for the quickest answer to "can my fund act here?" A £100m portfolio running a 5% weight (£5m position) needs ~10 days to build at 20% ADV — manageable but not trivial. A £500m fund at 5% (£25m position) is at capacity even at 20% participation. Smaller specialist funds (sub-£25m) can move with no friction at all.

C. Liquidation runway — how many days to exit

A 1% issuer-level position needs a fortnight to liquidate at conservative (10%) participation. That is the practical ceiling for institutional ownership. Anything chunkier requires either a block trade through a market-maker or a tape that has multi-week patience. Note that Peter Brodnicki and other insiders hold a meaningful slug, so true free-float liquidity is materially lower than the headline £313m market cap implies.

D. Execution friction

The 60-day median daily range is 2.07% of the close — above the 2% threshold that flags elevated impact cost. Combined with realized vol at 45%, the practical cost of a hurried entry or exit is meaningful: even a 0.5% position requires patience or you pay the bid-ask in slippage. Zero zero-volume days in the last 60 sessions, which is reassuring.

Bottom line on liquidity: the largest issuer-level position that clears within five days at 20% ADV is 0.5% of market cap (~£1.6m). At 10% participation, the same size needs 7 days. Funds above ~£100m AUM should treat this as a 2–4 week build/exit name, not a same-week trade.

J. Support, resistance and actionable levels

The only actionable levels in the next quarter are 506p below and 578p above. Below 506p, the chart vacates to 472p with nothing in between — that's the line in the sand for any stop-loss. Above 578p (the 50-day SMA), the next test is the 200-day at 682p — getting there would require a 28% rally and is not the central case in the next 90 days. The realistic 3-month range to plan around is 480p–600p.

K. Technical scorecard

Net score: -4 out of -6 to +6. Five of six dimensions score zero or negative. The one neutral (relative strength) is forced by the absence of benchmark data, not by genuine outperformance — absolute return of -37% over 12 months in a flat-to-up UK market is a clear underperformance signal that would normally take this row to -1 as well.

L. Stance — bearish on 3-to-6 month horizon

The technical setup is bearish. Price has lost the 200-day, posted a third death cross of the cycle, broken below the 52-week low intraday, and is doing so on rising volume and elevated volatility — every one of the four dimensions of the chart is saying the same thing. The mid-March RSI(21) oversold print and the late-April MACD-histogram positive cross gave bulls a tactical bounce of ~30p but neither has held, and the failure pattern matches every prior bear-trend rally in this name (Q4-2024, Q3-2025).

Two specific levels would change the view:

• Above 578p (50-day SMA) — a weekly close above this on rising volume reopens 640–680p as a target and would be the first sign the death cross is being neutralized.
• Below 506p (52-week low) — a weekly close below 506p activates 472p as the next support and confirms an extension of the 18-month downtrend; that is also the level at which the dividend yield approaches 5%, which may serve as a soft floor for income buyers.

Liquidity is a constraint for any fund running £100m+ AUM at 5% position weights, but it is not the bottleneck for the smaller specialist UK small-cap mandates that are the natural buyers here. The correct action right now is watchlist — wait for either a weekly close above 578p with volume confirmation or a capitulation low and bullish reversal candle below 506p that prints on 2× ADV and is not given back the next day. Building a position here, in the middle of a confirmed downtrend, has poor reward-to-risk regardless of fundamental conviction.

M. Disconfirming signals to monitor

The strongest case the bears could be wrong runs through three things: the 30-March block trade was real institutional accumulation, the BoE rate cycle pivots faster than priced, and the Main Market transition triggers passive demand. The price action does not yet reflect any of those, but they are the things to watch.

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Technicals derived from 2,894 daily OHLCV observations (Nov-2014 through May-2026) and pre-computed indicators in data/tech/. All prices in pence (GBp); 100p = £1. ADV calculations use 20-day trailing window through 2026-05-01.