jhg,
From a practical standpoint if not a technical one, the answer to your question about buying before the close is yes. But they can't directly buy. Since they will be putting in big orders which those making market in PWER must fill, then the actual ones doing the buying will be the market makers themselves, increasing their inventories in anticipation of the big buy orders which they must fill. In fact, I strongly suspect that that is precisely what they have been doing for the last month or so---accumulating inventory---all the while forcing the price of PWER down. That way, if their average price is low, then when they fill these big orders out of their inventories, they stand to make a big profit. Their game is, acquire enough inventory to fill the orders, then run the price up as much as they can, and pocket the difference.
Now, exactly how much buying the MMs will have to do to fill these orders is a big unknown.
The MOC orders are simply buy orders which are filled after the close, at the price at which the stock closes at. My guess is that although there will be some profit taking by momentum players into the close on Monday, the MMs will do their best to counteract this with buying pressure, since they stand to make more if the stock closes higher. Eventually, that game becomes a wash, if the amount of momentum profit taking exceeds the profit margin the MMs can make, so again, what it comes down to is the relative amount of speculative selling compared to the amount of institutional buying. If the speculative selling is relatively small, and the MM's inventories relatively large, then the MMs can more easily both absorb this selling and run up the price going into the close, and it will be more advantageous for them to do so if they can.
I think the bottom line is that the volume on Monday will provide the best clue as to when the best time to sell will be.
And BTW, the only sure thing is: there's no such thing as a sure thing....... ;-]
So be careful.
Regards,
WS |
