I agree and also on a side note, I don't think this move is unrelated to our new board member, I believe he has already added value.
1. He runs a fund that invests in beaten down value plays
2. While he may not have bought via his fund, and may have too, time will tell, it is likely he has a number of other institutional friends that make similar bets. Fund managers share ideas, it is likely some of his cohorts added here to support the price, clearly this was institutional buying, which is GREAT for shareholders (strong hands, lower float etc).
3. In regards to the gaming, there is a great deal of 'spoofing' going on here. Spoofing is the following:
A. Fake orders utilized to scare traders into believing there is downward pressure (in our case) on the stock.
B. A trader will put in a large sale or group of sales well above the bid to imply alot of sellers in the name.
C. As a result, traders either stay away from the name or they bid low, and thus the price doesn't rise
D. How you know the order is a spoof is you will see it disappear when the bid gets too close, clearly the group or trader doesn't really want to sell and should the bid encroach, they get worried they may indeed have to sell the shares
E. Our group has been watching this daily for years, we see this on level 2 constantly. Even yesterday the spoof sales were there until the buys started, then it disappeared, and once the demand slowed late in the day it showed up again. Clearly if someone wanted to sell 20k shares yesterday at 1.94 or so they could have.
F. Watch level 2 for a few weeks and you will see the same. You don't necessarily need to naked short to cause problems.
G. The spoofers however, are playing a dangerous game as witnessed yesterday. They may be able to pull an order when there is no news, on a halt, they can't.
H. The gaming is still going on in this stock but it may very well be our new board member's trading acumen helped identify this issue and yesterday they pushed them out of the way.
We will need continued demand to stop this game, else shorts will likely try and play this stock more. However, they should take yesterday as a warning, the stock moved 45% on no news.
The question they must ask is, how far will it move on material news and a halt and now that we have likely 25% of the float in a new institution's hands (group of tuts) plus existing strong retail and tuts/mgmt.
That doesn't leave much to cover with (especially when you consider most in the name are heavily underwater and not selling anytime soon, they've stuck it out this long, its socked away until we see a very big move in the stock. So arguably many retail are acting like a strong handed institutions), and should more institutions be looking at this name (which my guess is they are) they will be competing with those groups for shares on material news. The issue about being a trapped short isn't that if you're short you 'cant cover' which some retail/inexperienced shorts assume it means, but rather you can't cover profitably. Its great to say, hey I have a 45% gain on my paper short, but the problem is, if no longs are selling, and shorts simply pushed the share price down, well to cover they need to push it right back up! Again, I have discussed this in the past about an 'artificial share price' and why many on the boards were always yelling 'sell the pop', trying to scare longs into selling - because there were few shares to cover with, well now there's fewer.
If I am short and have made 35-50% on a trade, just lost 20% of that through hubris and thinking a company with 27 mil will go bankrupt (LOL) because I have some emotional hatred to NPE's, well I certainly am not a smart trader (and not only because of the emotional side which we all see on the boards, but the unwillingness to be smart enough to take profits). And moreover, I should ask myself, do I want to have to outbid and institution chasing a low float, illiquid stock to cover on material news?
I think the smart money knows the answer to that and we saw it yesterday!
Good Luck to all Longs!
"Bulls make money, Bears make money, pigs get slaughtered"
AI
