bro, The "Health" stocks are notorious for this, they are some of the biggest thieves on the NYSE. To be fair though, it is quite possible that HE is the one getting fucked this time. Ususally, the seller will come to him and let him know when he has a large order, and to have the spec "work it" - the spec will ALWAYS ask if he has more where this came from, and that is why the "cleanup print" is so important. Every once in a while, the spec, believing that there is no more to sell, will do a 2M "clean up" print, of which he will participate and take it up to make some coin. However, when he sees the broker come back to the post with another 2M to sell, I would pay to see the look on the specs eyes at this point. So, I would not be surprised if this happened earlier in the week, and now it is "fool me once shame on you, fool me twice..." nitro
Exactly! I traded the stock on Friday before the bell only, after the open the Nov 25 Put was a lot of fun.
I went with the NOV 25 C (didn't even know it existed) and bought at 2. The b/a was 2 x 2 which kind of said to me nobody knows what the hell is going to happen. It was all over the place for the remainder of the day. It really moves (.30 in seconds while the stock price sits)and I expect the volatility to continue. Looks like a bunch of guys daytrading options for excitement. Geo. Anbody know whether the 25s were just created? I ask because Yahoo had the lowest strike as a 35 and IB wouldn't let the 25 trade for quite some time. Geo.
I think they were created between Thursday and Friday. I was able to trade the 25 put right from the beginning (when it was jumping around between 1.35 and 2.35), and I also tried to trade the 22.5 put, but it "could not value the contract", so after a few minutes I gave up and focused all my attention on the 25 strike. I actually kept shorting it and buying it back within a few minutes for .3 or so less. I was planning to go home short the put, but the stock climbed into the close and didn't give me a chance. Maybe on Monday I will be glad that happened.
I know everybody makes mistakes....and I wasn't reading the tape on THC at all...but by looking at the chart, I just can't figure out why anyone would get long this stock on Thursday. Or any day for that matter. It looked like disaster just waiting to happen. Of course hindsight is 20/20. (I'm sure I'm gonna make a lot of friends with this post )
If I were you I wouldn't worry about that too much. Ever since I have been an outcast here on ET for questioning the masses' uniform opinion, I have spent less time chit-chatting and more time making money. There is a good side to everything.
It looks to me as if the Spec was handed a large sell order that he was pressed to execute quickly (maybe because the seller had another buying opportunity), and he thought "jeez, there is no support" so he halted it, got on the phone, and arranged to sell it to others by offering them a discount, then opened it back up and posted the sales.
[. It looked like disaster just waiting to happen. Of course hindsight is 20/20. (I'm sure I'm gonna make a lot of friends with this post ) [/B][/QUOTE] When I bought the calls above they were a nibble. I had posted a question on Financial Chat as to whether anyone else thought THC was a screaming buy. This was midday Friday with stock down maybe another 3.50. They were absolutely against it and I listened. Was the company going to come out and say something in AH conf. call to drive it down even more? This isn't some tech company with no earnings or a biotech with one failed drug, after all. It's the second largest hospital machine in the nation. Here's another. Someone said Gates had sold 2M shares most recently. Easily checked out. Was he going to sell more than he usually does in this environment if the announcement would drive the price down? He's the client for christ sakes. Of course his lawyers told him what the decision would likely be. So I sat on my hands like everybody else waiting for AH. Geo.
Did anyone trade the last 15 minutes in THC? Huge blocks for sale between 15:45 and 15:55, driving the price down to low 25's before huge buying in the closing minutes preceding the conference call, driving the stock up almost 2 points in a few minutes, i.e., if you didn't get the shares on the downturn, it was impossible to get 'em the other way.
I gotta thank Dustin on this one. He saved me about 25k by getting me to sell half in the low 30's on island before the halt. Go figure, even with that -57k day on the 31'st, I'm still somehow up on this month.