Mq, I'm not so sure that very many people within the G* circus really know the size and shape of the whole elephant, let alone have the opportunity & motivation to trade on that knowledge plus the wherewithal to move the market in a significant way.
Greg Powers probably knows as much as all but a few of the top insiders and has a lot more money than all of them put together, and could buy up (the equivalent of) over 10% of the public float without moving the stock price north. Maybe he's still buying.
A lot of people know a little bit about how things are going--Jim P. has reported dealers telling him they're buying the stock while selling the phones, regional managers know how they're doing vs their targets--but how many see the whole elephant? My guess: less than 50, probably less than 20. And of those few dozen, how many know how the market will react when it next gets a better glimpse of the numbers. Will 3M MoU, which would make me feel pretty good, satisfy Wall Street? 5M? Would 2M send the stock tanking even farther? It seems imposssble that we'll see less than 2 or more than 5M....Even if I KNEW for sure EXACTLY what the MoU were between the range of 2-5M, I'm not at all sure I'd also know how to trade the stock. A well paid, insider sitting on lots of options, anyway, and subject to nasty sanctions if caught trading on or divulging non-public data is not likely to take the chance given the risk of misguessing the market reaction to any particular number.
When a merger announcement is pending, one often sees a spike in volume and options activity, usually just a few days before the announcement. I remember that happened with Loral in 1996. But the G* situation is not so clear cut, and the number of people with access to the "real oil" are probably a lot fewer than in an M&A situation. Anyway, that's my take. |
