THE MYSTERY OF THE MARKET MAKERS.........
Most of you have debated why there has been such tremendous volume and yet the price has not elevated to the levels it should have. Well there are several explanations to that mystery.
First of all, market makers can go short as much as they want as long as they have the "staying power"' to carry the short position. In essence, as long as they have the capital to stay short they can do so. They do not have to borrow stock from anyone, as with a nasdaq stock, therefore pulling out your physical certs is rather meaningless.
They do however, from time to time, have to cover that short, if the clearing firms of those market makers "call them in". In other words, they have to cover at some point, usually towards the end of the month, in order to satisfy the rules of the clearing house they are using. For example, if a market maker is using Bear Sterns as a clearing firm, Bear Stern will not allow them to carry a short for as long as they want, but rather make them cover the short position.
No worry for the market makers, however. They got a way to get around that as well. Heres how it works. For example, Market Maker A is short 50k shares of tgsk. Lets assume he has to cover his short now, so what he does is buy that position from another maker, with all intentions of going short again(or selling it back to the same mm in a couple of days) as soon as his original short is covered and the clearing firm is satisfied for the time being. This is called "rolling over a short". What happens in fact, is that mm's play this game every time they dont want to cover a short but are forced to. Thus, all they have to do is sell and buy from each other at different times satisfying the rules of the exchange.
This is why we are seeing such tremendous volume at times. In fact, there could be no real buying or selling, yet the stock could trade 400k shares in a day. Pretty neat game. MM A buys from MM B and then he in turn sells to MM C and he in turn sells back to MM A, they just created enormous volume that doesnt "really" exist.
Theres no way in hell that a stock with such a small float can trade this number of shares. Its impossible. Im certain that the MM's are just rotating their shorts from one another and creating fictitious volume.
In fact, if anyone noticed, the # of MM's in the last week or so increased from 15 to 23. I believe many of these characters were placed there just to accommodate the work of the greedy and creative MM's looking to make a buck any way they can.
What is the solution, one may ask?
Well, the only way to have the market makers cover is to paralyze their staying power, or erode their capital. Basically, you have to do damage to their pockets to get them to cover. The only way thats going to happen is if the price goes up, so they have to put up more money to continue to stay short. This is something many MM's do not want to do because it prevents them to take advantage of other "trading" opportunities. If they get sick enough, theyll eventually cover and go elsewhere.
I, as many of you, have watched tgsk trade up a storm on many occasions and yet remained baffled as to why we are still hovering at a buck. Well its only a matter of time before the MM's get tired of us biting into them, cover, and get out of this stock.
I am confident that this company is financially sound, and growing, yet the price does not reflect that fact.
I am also trying to get figures on what is the actual short position in the stock is, but yet have not been able to come to an accurate number (it is quite large, however).
Will keep you all posted of my findings, for now, i urge you all to keep your cool, and watch how the MM's will just fade away with time.
Good luck to you all,
Brodway |
