Art,
It takes very little these days to pull a stock down because so many people are willing to sell. The MMs don't have to do anything but lower the bids to stimulate the public into dumping their shares, and they will do it in a heartbeat. Most market makers these days are nothing more than traders. There is a lot more money in the game for them buying low and selling high than there is just taking the bid/ask markup. The only reason they can pull the price down like that is because people will sell into it, and the MMs will sell it at a higher, but attractive price to the institutions. The price will go back up when the public stops selling, and the institutions start paying the higher prices to accumulate. A public buying frenzy would drive it up too, but I doubt we will see the public lead the way on this stock.
Here's a bit of interesting (to me) data.
Volume = 1.324M
Trades = 1,107
About 320,000 shares sold above 5_1/8
Top trades
200,000 5_1/16
43,400 4_29/32
43,400 4_31/32
15,500 4_7/8
10,000 5_1/2
10,000 4_31/32
9,000 5
9,000 5
9,000 5
8,200 5_1/8
Take off these top trades and you have well under a million shares and 1,100 trades, or an average trade of 900 shares. The time and sales record shows tons of 100 share lots. This data is confirmed by
iw.thomsoninvest.net
which shows only 1/3 of today's volume from institutions. Obviously, the big buyers were benefiting from the bargain prices. I only regret I didn't dump my shares this morning and wait for a bottom to replace them. My size would have been buried in the noise. I would prefer not to do that, but I can't keep those other few hundred people from doing it and taking the value out of my investment. I was betting on a stronger day for the market overall, and really didn't think we would go below $5. I did put in a buy order at 4_9/16 just in case.
I heard a nice radio ad for the Home sale this morning. I hope Arthur is right that the market will go into a better fall/winter period. Christmas is coming.
Dan |
