Hitesh--
But also--as far as SHVA is concerned it doesn't matter: their news came out after the close. (As noted, my broker'd heard rumors, we thought about a short...aaarrrrrggghhh.)
But the Robot: something started this, and I'd love to know what. After the first few volleys it may just have been momentum, but there has to have been, let's say, a First Cause.
[skip the following unless you've got a high boredom threshold]
Let's hope it was just mad wild rumor. That (if I may digress) actually happened to me once, in September '95. I was at my broker's, sitting in front of a Quotron, watching, among other things, a stock called ZING, of which I owned 2000 shares. ZING had been moving bigtime (for no reason) for about three days: up from 14 to (at that moment) 26. Suddenly it started coming off. VERY fast. I turned to the guy I was sharing the workstation with (well, he was a broker, I couldn't do it) and told him to sell. By the time he'd got the trade through it was down another point and a half; sank to back to 15 in the space of 20 minutes, insane volume. At 15 we called to buy back in, but got hit at 17. Sold on the close at 21 1/2 because I was afraid there really might be some bad news around the corner. Astonishingly, there wasn't: it was just a panic that built on itself. Next day it went up another 2. (What happened later is, of course, another story.) So let's hope this is something just as crazy.
Hey! Aren't I gonna be fun when I hit the Old Folks' Home (sorry, Retirement Community) with my trading stories?
Janice |