8 Million Share Block Trade Possible Reasons WhyThe price drop at the end was to facilitate this 8 milion share bllocktrade. There are only a few reasons I can think of why this trade went down. Lets take a look...
There are only 5 institutional holders who had this much ammo.
Holder | Shares | Date Reported | % Out | Value |
The sale could have originated in one of these 5 funds. The one fund that I will omit is US Global Investors. Frank Holmes and Ralph Aldis loves the mgmt team and they have been a lon term holder. Wellington or Blackrock could have dumped shares as window dressing as no mutual fund likes to show losers in their portfolio at year end. Could have been window dressing and a tax loss sale at the same time.
The other possibility is a hedge fund like Renaissance Capital using a Prime Broker like Goldman or Morgan Stanley to cover their 8 million share short position. Algo's drove this price down and guys like Renaissance who have been in this stock can take down the price and use a floor broker and specialist to accumulate enough shares to close out thier short position. Its a great strategy, lose 1 or 2 million on your long position and make 10 plus million on the short side. You know something was going on with all the heavy volume to downside in the last 15 minutes during several trading days.
When the next timeframe for reporting of institutional holdings appears we will know who the most likely seller was. Same goes for the short interest report for DEC 15.