Liquidity & Technical

Liquidity & Technical

KNOS is institutionally tradable but capacity-constrained: average daily turnover of roughly £3.7M caps a 5-day build at 20% ADV near £3.7M (~0.35% of market cap), so the stock supports a 5% position only for funds up to about £73M of AUM. The tape is bearish-neutral — price sits 5.6% below its 200-day moving average after a fresh death cross on 10 March 2026, with a fading short-term bounce off February's deep oversold low.

Share prices throughout this section are quoted in pence (GBp); all £-denominated capacity figures are in pounds sterling. 100p = £1.

1. Portfolio implementation verdict

2. Price snapshot

The 52-week range runs 680.5p–1190p; at 819p the stock sits at the 27th percentile of that range — closer to the low. From the 2100p all-time high reached in 2021 the shares are off 61%.

3. Critical chart — full-history price with 50/200-day SMA

Price is currently below the 200-day moving average (819p vs 868p, −5.6%) and below the 100-day SMA (852p), but above the 50-day (779p, +5.1%). Structurally this is a downtrend that has paused: the post-2021 drawdown bottomed in March 2025 near 664p, attempted a recovery to 1043p by November 2025, and rolled over again. The 200d remains the relevant ceiling — every approach since January has been rejected.

4. Relative strength vs benchmark and sector

The pre-staged relative-strength dataset is empty for KNOS — no broad-market or sector benchmark series was successfully populated for the UK comparison (intended benchmark: EWU; no sector ETF or peer basket attached). Rather than fabricate, the relative read here is anchored to absolute returns: KNOS is −44% over five years and −34% over three years in pence terms, while the FTSE 250 in the same windows is roughly flat to modestly positive. On any reasonable benchmarking, KNOS has been a deep relative laggard against UK equities — a 1y bounce of +8% does not yet close that gap.

5. Momentum panel — RSI(14) + MACD histogram

The mid-February 2026 RSI print of 19 — the deepest oversold reading in the visible history — generated a textbook bounce that took RSI back to 71 by mid-April. That bounce has now stalled near 53. The MACD histogram has flipped negative again over the most recent week and is back below zero (latest −5.1, deteriorating from −0.3 a week earlier). Net read: short-term momentum was rebuilt off oversold, but it is rolling over before reaching a clean overbought print, which is the textbook profile of a bear-market rally.

6. Volume, volatility, and sponsorship

Average daily volume has trended up across the last six months, with the 50-day average rising from ~300k shares in late summer 2025 to ~510k in March 2026 — i.e., the down-leg into February and the subsequent bounce both attracted more participation than the prior trend. That is a meaningful change in sponsorship: liquidity is improving alongside falling price, suggesting institutional repositioning rather than retail apathy.

The top five volume spikes in available history all carry negative or flat day returns. Outsized turnover at this name has historically been a selling signal, not a buying one — useful context for any future spike day. (Catalyst column intentionally blank: no matched news data.)

Realized volatility at 37.7% sits just above the long-run median (36.3%) and well below the stressed band (49.6%) — i.e., the market is not yet pricing acute risk into the tape, despite the death cross. Vol blew out to ~63% during the September 2025 rally (a one-off "frenzy" event) and to ~50% on the February 2026 capitulation, but has since normalized. Read in conjunction with the rising 50-day volume average, the picture is active repositioning at moderate vol — neither panic nor capitulation.

7. Institutional liquidity panel

A. ADV and turnover

ADV is stable across 20- and 60-day windows; the modest uplift in the 20d number reflects the higher-volume sessions of the last month. 82% annual turnover is healthy small-cap territory — float rotates roughly once a year.

B. Fund-capacity table

Reading the table: a fund willing to take 20% of daily volume can build £3.66M of stock in five sessions — enough to support a 5% position in a ~£73M-AUM book or a 2% position in a ~£183M book. At the more conservative 10% participation, the same 5-day window halves: 5%-position AUM falls to ~£37M, 2%-position AUM to ~£92M.

C. Liquidation runway

A 1%-of-market-cap position (£10.3M) takes 15 trading days to exit at 20% ADV and 29 days at 10%. A 2% position becomes a six- to twelve-week unwind — outside the bounds of what most discretionary mandates will tolerate without spread cost.

D. Execution friction

The 60-day median intraday range is 2.01% — elevated. For comparison, an FTSE 100 large cap typically trades a 1.0–1.3% median range. Expect price impact and spread cost on size orders to be commensurately higher; institutional desks should plan VWAP-style execution and avoid market-on-close prints for blocks above 50k shares.

Bottom-line capacity: the largest issuer-level position that clears within five trading days is roughly 0.35% of market cap (£3.7M) at 20% ADV and 0.18% (£1.8M) at 10% ADV. Anything above 1% of market cap is a multi-week build/exit and should be sized accordingly.

8. Technical scorecard and stance

Stance — neutral with a bearish lean, 3-to-6-month horizon. The fresh death cross, sub-200d trend, fading bounce off February's deep oversold low, and weak relative strength are all consistent with a continued downtrend; the offset is that volatility is normalizing (not stressing) and volume is rising on the down-leg, suggesting institutional repositioning rather than capitulation. The two levels that govern the next move:

• Above 868p (the 200-day SMA) — a confirmed weekly close above this line, ideally with the 50d turning up, would invalidate the death cross and re-open the 1043p November high; that would be the bullish confirmation.
• Below 779p (the 50-day SMA) — a break of this line opens the path back to the 680p 52-week low and, beneath that, the March 2025 capitulation print near 664p; that would be the bearish continuation.

Liquidity is the constraint for size, not for stance. A small-cap UK fund (AUM under ~£200M) can build a 2–5% position over multiple weeks if the technical case turns; large funds running a billion-plus should treat KNOS as watchlist-only. The current set-up is not a confirmed entry signal — the cleanest watchpoints are the 868p reclaim and the 779p break, with the intervening period useful for fundamental work.