Hi folks,
I thought a bit more about the insider activity of Bert Applegath and realized I HAD IT ALL WRONG. Here is a better description of what happened. First, Applegath owns anywhere from 900,000 to 1.3 mil shares depending on what time it is. But anyway he has that much to play with.
I noticed that Bert was doing some odd things with trading the common stock. But then realized that this was not as it seemed, due to the greater significance of options to acquire stock in the grand scheme of things.
At one point Applegath was buying, buying, buying at the open market all at very high prices (over $1).
Then, later on, in August, he was selling, selling, selling, selling, selling, all at the absolute low in the .30 range.
Is he just a really bad trader? Obviously not. He was capping the stock price so that they could get some options priced and RE-PRICED, all at .37 or .38 cents. They made three separate announcements to that effect in August. Shortly (I mean a few days) after, the kimberlite was announced and the stock gapped up to .80, and then hit a high of $1.20.
Applegath uses his large cache of shares to manipulate the price down when he sees fit, and to extend the rises at the top when he sees fit, perhaps at other times simply to create the impression of volume.
But this blatant timing of the daily selling to keep the stock in the 30 cent range, followed by options announcements, followed by the news release on the discovery, is rather smelly IMO.
In any case I can't say he didn't believe in this play. On the contrary. He wanted to load up on options, not shares. Buying shares would have been too expensive.
Comments? |
