@Bear77 I don't pay too much attention to these fundie announcements unless they look "concentrated" and chunky trades ie. not pages and pages of in and outs, small volumes etc - that was taking onboard your comments previously on how these annoucnements work.

This one felt quite concentrated with some large size trades, and so I thought that Vanguard was guying it FOR the ETF's ... but I could stand absolutely corrected!

Fair enough @jcmleng - in my experience, when Vanguard have done chunky buys it's because either (a) the company has been added to an index that Vanguard track with one or more ETFs, or (b) Vanguard have created one or more new ETFs that hold that company, or (c) Vanguard have added the company to one of their existing ETFs such as a thematic ETF (SAAS, IT or growth/income, that sort of thing), or (d) Vanguard have rebalanced one of their existing thematic ETFs and decided to increase exposure within that ETF to that company, often because that company's own share price has increased so they have a larger market cap.

When an ETF holds a company based on its market cap, the ETF will generally buy more of that company as the market cap rises, particularly when that company is moving up the rankings within their own sector, i.e. their market cap is climbing faster than their peers. In other words, when passive fund flows are involved (ETFs), a rising share price can be a self-fulfilling prophecy. The higher the share price, the larger the market cap, the more stock the ETF(s) need to hold in relation to that company's peers, the higher the share price rises as a result of that buying... something that has probably occurred with HSN whose SP has risen from $4.86 on 10th July to now above $6/share.

HSN haven't been added to an S&P ASX index since 2007 (the ASX300 Index), so I'm thinking it's most likely related to HSN's share price rising after their guidance upgrade announcement on 14th July causing Vanguard to buy more shares to maintain HSN's market cap position within their ETFs (playing catchup).

Thanks for sharing that @Bear77 , that is very useful for future reads of these fundie announcements. Despite your previous notes on how these things work, I still absolutely struggle to read the announcements with full confidence ...!

No worries @jcmleng - however the same argument can't be applied to fund managers who go long and short themselves on companies - so my comments there were just in relation to the world's largest ETF providers like Vanguard, Blackrock (which includes iShares), State Street (includes SPDR) and Invesco - see here: https://stockanalysis.com/etf/provider/

Also, Industry Super Funds like AustralianSuper and CBUS, HostPlus, etc. who allow members to buy direct shares but those shares are held in the name of the fund, not in the members' names, best example being AustralianSuper, Australia's largest super fund, and one of the 20 largest super funds in the world, manages over $365 billion on behalf of over 3.5 million members, mostly Australian members, and they are in and out of many ASX companies as "Subs" because of that. Particularly mid-sized / mid tier companies that are within the bottom two thirds of the ASX300.