Those of us that invest in microcaps are accustomed to high volatility on low trading volume. Sometimes the company will report major news, and nothing happens to the price until a year later. Other days there are 20% swings when somebody places a 100 share market order.

When there is a surge in volume lasting more than a couple days and a definitive trend in price, it’s not uncommon to see Renaissance Technologies file a 13G, indicating a 5%(or higher) position.

What would such a large systematic trading firm be doing in this part of the market? Aren’t microcaps usually owned by fundamental focused investors? Funny thing is sometimes there is sufficient volume and a definitive trend, causing systematic traders to get interested. The market switches from value dominated to momentum activated, even in microcaps.

This is part of a broader phenomenon explained well in Market force, ecology and evolution:

If a substantial mispricing develops by chance, value investors become active. Their trading shrinks the mispricing, with a corresponding change in price. This causes trend followers to become active; first the short term trend followers enter, and then successively longer term trend followers enter, sustaining the trend and causing the mispricing to cross through zero. This continues until the mispricing becomes large, but with the opposite sign, and the process repeats itself. As a result the oscillations in the mispricing are faster than they would be without the trend followers.

In real life, prices are almost never at their equilibrium.