Jason,
I agree with you, but it's still an interesting ethical dilemma.
I was watching EMLX all morning yesterday. I expectd it to decline and then bounce. As it approached 100, I was seconds away from buying it, but had to deal with an INCY trade first. When I checked EMLX again, it had broken 100, and I was just sitting there with my "finger on the trigger". But the Level II was so heavy on the ask, that I got an inckling that something was wrong (this was before the PR hit my newswires).
So I watched and it just kept going down. When it broke through 80 with essentially no buying interest, I knew I couldn't buy until I found out what was going on.
Like almost everyone else (not you apparently), I was stunned as it broke 70, 60, 50 ...
I knew the big gap was at 43ish, but this was obviously not a technical gap fill. I just sat there. You made a good trade. Congratulations.
My biggest question, in hindsight, is how I would feel had I bought in the 60's or 50's. The $75,000 profit would have been nice, but this was hardly a natural occurence. It had nothing to do with technicals, fundamentals, cycles, sectors, even rumors. It was a hoax.
I asked my wife how she would feel, had I bought in the 40's and sold in the 120's.
At first she said "How do you think I'd feel!" The only analogy I could come up with was: "What if someone blew open a bank safe and money started blowing around in the streets? Would I be justified in gathering up some of the money and keeping it, just because I happened to be in the neighborhood?"
I know it's not a perfect analogy, and I know those who bought took a great risk: If the PR had been true, the stock could easily have gone to the 20's. But what happened was just not right. It wasn't like buying a stock on a buyout rumor that turns out to be true. It wasn't like buying a stock on a technical bounce. It was a crime.
I also know that I would almost certainly would have kept the money had I made the trade. |
