Sam, follow up on my post:
Another possibility is some large fund is selling their shares. But I have ruled this possibility out: the trading behavior I have seen would be too self-destructive. Rather than "distribute shares" at a certain price level, while backing off when buying demand softens, this market maker is impatient and aggressively jumps inside the ASK to drive the price down as quickly as possible (although not as aggressively in pre-Christmas trading sessions). The same market maker buys back a lot of shares at the end of the trading day.
Second, I suspect the same party(ies) were selling shares from a "long postion" last November, prior to options expiry. At that time, I noted whoever was selling had millions of shares at their disposal, probably one of the bigger funds. By now, I am certain they would have run out of their own shares to sell and would have started borrowing shares to sell short. Thereore, I don't think this is a fund selling off part of their position, rather someone attempting to control the price.
Again, just my opinion. |
