Out on my trade calendar spread: 25 cents. EDIT: 20 minutes later looks like I cut too soon. Could have been very close to breakeven.
Money making formula, buy $400M at $1.5 and sell it at $3 in the open market. 100%+ in 10 business days I don't think the current market cap is sustainable
https://twitter.com/bespokeinvest/status/232492455310790657 With 267 mln share dilution, $KCG's effective market cap is higher now ($1.13 bln) than it was before the trade error ($1.01 bln) $$
Yes it happened and still is the case for AIBYY (ALBK in Ireland). However that's a very unusual case, because the government owns over 99% of shares outstanding. It also happened for YRCW, but that company had a smaller market cap before the preferred stock was converted. KCG is different to the above two, because it still has 90 million * $3 = $270 million worth of stock available to trade.
Seems that people are still believing the company can be bought out at a premium. Apparently having dozens of people look at the company and not buy it isn't enough to change investors mind
A buyout is possible, but I share your skepticism about that. I could understand that the consortium might hold onto their shares if KCG was trading at $2.50, but if it's still above $3.00 when conversion is allowed, I'd be surprised if they didn't sell some or all shares for a quick 100% profit.
There is no reason for them to sell. It's pretty clear that management didn't want to sell (assuming there was even a bidder). I think they did shareholders a disservice because the capital position isn't stronger than before this trade happened. They don't care because a lot of their pay is in cash. This could be another short squeeze as bankruptcy is off the table. I am out of the name. I think it will bleed from here.
I think I understand what happened. The CEO was on CNBC talking about how the stock turnover last week exploded, he said the stock was mostly institutionally owned but after the volume surge last week he was curious to know who 'the new owners are'. I suspect the new owners are dumber investors without a lot of knowledge of what they are doing and are just trying to gamble in a low priced stock, the marketsurfers of the world. A buyout here seem most unlikely -No one will buyout before the bailout deal closes -The most interested parties on KCG got involved on the deal(AMTD and others) -Whoever would buy them out had the opportunity to do so in the past a similar valuations yet they didn't -The most interest parties own the company and could possibly turn down
I thought I had my bases covered when the company and the NYSE removed the chances of the deal being struck down. But apparently I didn't count on investor idiocy being so resilient and I was wrong about panic sentiment. I suppose it takes horrible news to scare these gamblers. Lesson learned