Grace, Garcia:
Yes, there were indeed som 1M trades at 1:30PM EST (in fact, there
were at least 2 such trades (according to a broker), and perhaps
even 4...I tried to count the 1M lines on my Lombard graph). When
this happened, the stock shot up from 26 to 27 3/4 in a matter of
minutes. No doubt institutions were getting in today after the
intel report (maybe Stansky decided it was time for Magellan to
acquire some of the nearly 8 million shares of Atmel that Vinik had
dumped...more buying is likely to come).
Another reason for the rise was the fact that Atmel hadn't reacted
at all to last week's huge Nasdaq rise. An earnings miss had already
been figured into the stock price, and now that it appears more
likely that earnings will not disappoint, new investors rapidly
got in and short investors jumped ship (as of yesterday, the short
interest in ATML had reached 11.8 million shares!!). It was the
biggest rise in Atmel stock since January (when it rose 4 1/4 after
the company announced the buyback of up to 4 million shares of its
stock and stated that it thought "the stock is undervalued"). If
it was undervalued then, one has to wonder how undervalued it is
today.
The road ahead may still be rough, but today's activity was indeed
encouraging (it's interesting to think what *may* happen if/when
ATML states that earnings will meet/beat FY96 estimates, as Steve
Covin alluded to in an earlier post).
Vikas |
