thanks JB, I was confused about INCA.. I had forgotten about instinet being an ECN, I am just used to thinking of it as a 'broker' because it is used by brokers (MMs) to clear trades. Given the consistent pattern through the afternoon, I beleive it was probably a single MM I was following. I read the origional Chris Smith post (someone posted a link in the last week) when he talks about being amused at people's interpretations of level II info, he may as well have been talking about me. At times I may read too much into what I see on level II, but I do my best to make only reasonable inferences from this limited information. For instance, I do not come out and say so-and-so (for instance the NITE trades I have been following in the last few weeks) is shorting, or unloading.. that is unknowable, but I do try to identify patterns and suggest possible explanations.
For instance, the INCA blocks traded today: The pattern was that a large bid (2,500-5,000) from INCA would appear inside the spread. When the bid was filled, after a delay of about 1 minute or so, a new bid would appear, again from INCA, inside the spread and at the same or higher volume. There were two periods of activity like this with about 20-30min between them. I think it is not unreasonable to assume that one person was responsible for this buying behavior. From what I can tell, these bids filled to a total of around 100,000 warrants.
Someone suggested that this person will be selling all of these warrants by the end of the call. I do not think this likely. If this person does not have the funds to convert, they will still have access to shares of BNGO (self or borrowed to short) and can sell the stock to exercise the warrants. Either way, the sell side of this trade will show up in the common. This trader was taking advantage of the sell pressure on the warrants (so many limit orders filled at the bid) but this would work against him selling warrants, so he will sell them as stock (greater liquidity for selling - no time pressure)
L.L. & P. |
