Theory Re. Eric Sprott Purchase
Some may be wondering why Sprott purchased the 15M shares from Novo at 8.35 and 8.45 instead of just steadily buying more shares on the open market at current NFG share prices (mid to high 7's - closed at 7.68 yesterday).
Unless there are restrictions on him buying shares in the open market given the % of outstanding shares he already owns, I suspect he realized that if he tried to buy the 15M shares on the open market within a reasonable period of time, he'd likely have to pay higher and higher ask prices and thus drive the share price higher and higher as he tried to accumulate these millions of shares.
The 30-day average trading volume on NFG is currently around 145,000 shares. 15M shares would equate to approximately 103 days worth of trade volume at current levels, so in the end, he likely would have bid the share price up far higher than the 8.35 - 8.45 he paid for Novo's shares. Again, just a theory, but it would seem logical from Sprott's point of view.