Ralph,
One of the phenomena of the moment is the overly tight use of "stop-loss" orders. I'm seeing this on a number of stocks lately, so it isn't just TASA...
Specifically, an investor with a fairly large position will put in a stop-loss order, so as to sell the stock if it falls to a particular price. If there are a number of "stop loss" orders in place, and if these are all set 5% to 10% below the recently prevailing price, a small initial price movement can set off an abrupt decline.
It looks as though that is what happened today with TASA. During the early part of the day I had noticed that the size of the bid and the asked positions was relatively small. In fact, at the time I sensed that a small increase in buying might have moved the stock upward fairly quickly, but I was tied up with other stuff today, and didn't trade.
Just looking at the Yahoo charts, it appears that at least 5 sell orders of between 1.0 and 2.5 thousand shares each hit the market just before 2:00 PM, after a very quiet day. There just wasn't enough demand to absorb these sells, until the stock reached 1 1/32, at which time buyers showed up, and pushed the price back up to 1 1/8. Had I been in my office, I probably would have been buying more....
I think that this is more an indication of a nervous market than of any problem specific to TASA.
Bob Davis
The Napeague Letter
napeague.com |
