"so, it's now part of an index. we now enter a world of liquidity, with the financial patch in place?"
Unfortunately, I don't think so. This is a one time event. It makes it more attractive to managers that want to match the index, but the index does not trade the stock at all, so it actually DECREASES liquidity.
"volume picks up a tad, from here out??"
Nope. Probably back to the old numbers. There may be a little more volume next week, but the main buying is done. In fact, a lot of the buying in the last month may have been related to the Russell.
"any feel for what it will be like, now that it's a real stock?"
Not really. Unfortunately, history has not been very kind to Russell additions. I think that it is directly related to hedge funds front-running the additions in April-June, and thereby increasing the price to higher than deserved levels. If anything, I'm tempted to short it Tues. or Wed. next week, with the hope of picking up a point or two over the next month.
The stock that I was watching/playing in the last days/hours was VLTR (already in the 3000, but going into the micro-cap and having a bigger part of the 3000). It had about 700K of volume in the last 5 minutes. That is about twice its normal daily volume. It has had a nice run in the last weeks/months.
This seems to happen every year in some of the very thinly traded stocks. I always say that I will play it better next year but never get around to it. I bet a lot of hedge funds do a pretty good job of playing it. |
