Li: (1) No, that makes absolutely no sense. (2) Nor does 18,400 puts for $2.50, Jan. and Feb. alone. Am I to believe that 1.84 million shares of bets say that IMMU will plunge below $2.50 before then? Or that there are 1.84 million shares of hedges against long positions? It seems more likely that there are "bullets" being fired into the market, as the Wall Street thugs like to call 'em.
No, I'll go one better. On 8/25, I extrapolated:
It seems to me that in these markets, certain entities, through collusion, have the option to cover their short positions-- naked or otherwise, real or phantom-- at virtually any price without the threat of a "dance of 1000 screams."
Then Idaho posted omnisciently (typical) his "Deep Capture" article which, in Part 2, explains how a hedge fund, via a market maker cohort, can fire those semi-automatic bullets at a stock price. It's an illegal married put, a double whammy of puts and naked shorts.
However, in this case, considering the unlikelihood of a $2.50 strike price payoff targeted by some maverick in puts, I contend that possibly he is realizing his gains in short positions alone AND that the options market is just a way to launder his naked short.* And as the "Deep Capture" article points out, Black Scholes does not determine for thieves the price of options. Heck, I imagine they could pay nothing and ask for a receipt. (I'm from Chicago.)
Somehow, I envision that a true phantom share can never be squeezed. It never existed in the first place.
This is all conjecture. And I really do not care at this juncture. I'm still negotiating entry points. I lamented the fact that I was paralyzed before at $4. Well, I just reloaded. And finally there are some reasonable prices on calls to take advantage of a possible intermediate pop. Unfortunately, it took a precipitous decline in IMMU to present that opportunity.
* In post 7239, I presented a different type of laundering by Madoff, postulated by a reader response of one of the Deep Capture articles. |
