The final adds to the Russell 3000 were available to institutional investors by July 1. They are made available to all investors on July 8.
The Russell 3000 is simply the 3000 largest stocks by market cap. There are two subsets, the Russell 1000 (the 1,000 largest stocks), and the Russell 2000 (the next 2,000 largest stocks by market cap). There is no hard and fast rule (e.g. $300 million market cap.) to be included.
There was an article in the Wall Street Journal last week (Friday, I believe) about the effect being added to the Russell 2000 has had (note past tense) on a few stocks. The article noted that index funds try to make their updates to reflect the Russell 2000 reconstitution by July 1. If this is true, we have already seen the "Russell 2000" effect on VLNC. I think we saw it about last Thursday when we saw some strong buying just before the close which lifted the stock from ~$6.875 to $7.375 in a matter of minutes.
Other than that one period of a few minutes last week, my observation is that the stock has been under a decent amount of selling pressure that started during the pre-conference call runup. There have been consistent sales of 3,000, 5,000, and 8,000 share blocks that began during the conference call runup. My suspicion is that whomever bought the $3 million worth of shares at $6.24 is unloading for a quick profit. But unloading in measured amounts so as to not put undue pressure on the stock.
I'd entertain other theories as to who has been consistently unloading blocks of this size since last week. Maybe it is those evil "professional" shorts, but not Castle Creek <VBG>. |
