No probs @UncleWally - AEF have had mixed results over the years, not always backing winners, but their LIC's SP has risen from around $4 to over $6 per share in the past year, so they must be doing something right. I also think that people like to watch what they're investing in and often follow them on the basis that if AEF have vetted a company and are increasing their exposure to that company then that's often good enough for some time-poor ordinary retail investors who want to feel they are investing responsibly and "ethically" (a very subjective concept) themselves yet don't have much time and/or confidence to do their own DD.
That's my view on why there's often copycat purchases of any company that AEF are gaining exposure to or increasing their stake in.
And, as I said, AEF could also be buying more themselves and we won't know until they hit 11.64% or higher, being 1% above the level disclosed in their notice yesterday. Their last 1% rise (in percentage ownership of CGS) took 12 months (June last year to June this year), so I wouldn't hold your breath waiting for their next notice.
BTW, I don't hold AEF or CGS; I've never held AEF to the best of my knowledge, but I've held dozens of LICs at various times in past years, mostly trading on the prospect of discounts in their SPs (to their NTA or NAV) narrowing faster than their NTA or NAV could fall (didn't always work out so well), and I definitely did hold Cogstate about 7 years ago, but at some point not long after I bought in I thought my investment thesis in Cogstate was busted (I can't quite remember the exact reasons why) so I fully exited. That exit would have been in 2018 when they were in a strong downtrend on their way to a sub-20 cents/share low point in mid-2019. Of course from there they 10-bagged to almost $2.50 before going back into another downtrend in 2022. I stopped following them very soon after I sold out actually, but interesting to look back now with the benefit of hindsight and see what might have been if I'd NOT sold out...
I believe my exit back in 2018 coincided with a decision to exit a number of positions that were not yet profitable, as in the companies themselves were still posting losses, and I reckon I came around to the realisation that it was better to have identified a likely catalyst that should cause a substantial positive sentiment shift before buying into companies like that. Prior to that I was identifying various possible positive catalysts but I wasn't really putting enough work into guesstimating the likelihood of those catalysts ocurring. And I also decided to focus far more on areas where I thought I had an edge or at least understood the companies and their operating environment reasonably well, and that clearly was NOT the case with Cogstate. For me anyway.
Well done to those that have held them from 19 cents per share in 2019!