re:" what kind of info, outcome can we expect at 01-16 court meeting and what kind of movement in stock price, would be considered+++ real fun!, in your(humble opinion"
If I may...
We expect a new trustee to be confirmed by the court. Rather than being a banker with a conflict of interest like the old trustee, the new trustee has a background in the o&g industry and can be expected to "go to bat" so to speak for mosh unit holders in regard to recovering revenue lost due to "slight of hand" chicanery on the part of PXD and to a lesser extent Woodside, operators of the wells. Since the operators have sole control of the properties and, well, well operations, they also control information available to mosh unit holders.
PXD in particular has acted to keep holders in the dark about the true value of their remaining holdings and their obvious motive as apparent bad stewards in choking off revenue was to cause the trust to wither away and terminate so they could then grab billion dollar reserves for themselves. It's a "Snidely Whiplash" scenerio personified. PXD as mustache twirling villian had all but finished tying "Sweet Beth" mosh to the railroad tracks.
They did something similar a few years back in Kansas, were caught, hands were slapped in court, but apparently did not learn their lesson.
An outcome favorable to holders is expected at the court hearing. A favorable outcome of the hearing clears the legal path for further advancement of the case. The next step would be compelling "discovery". PXD presumeably has seimeic data so-far witheld and so forth that they have been using to drill the rich Midway find (held back from mosh). --kind of like the "Nixon tapes" PXD probably doesn't want to turn that level of detailed info over.
So, they may (wisely) decide to settle soon after the hearing. In which case mosh holders (through the new trustee) may elect to accept money (and/or I, suppose properties) as an inducement to settle the case "out of court".
Settlement in the prior Kansas affair was about half of damges claimed I believe, so, in this case, we are looking at around $500m. This could happen anytime between the hearing and a trial date, after it is set. This could still take what, weeks, months? I don't think years because this issue has already suffered postponements, and already dragged on for years (since 2003 i think) and is now "coming to a head".
It would be in PXD's best interest to settle. If they don't they have a good chance for a finding against them for the full $1.2b not counting possible "punitive" damages, punitive damges would be to "dissuade" them them from trying something like this again in the future. I mean, if all they have to do is give back what wasn't their's in the first place, that's not much of a risk to try again, perhaps resolving to be more sneaky next time.
If they lose the trial outright (likely), they could appeal but would have to put up (2X)1.2 = $2.4b in escrow pending the outcome of the appeal. What could they appeal on? Maybe a technicality, but since mosh has money for good lawyers now, that seems unlikely. The best thing for PXD would be to get this thing behind them asap or risk being consumed by their own greed.
In regard to price action. I agree with the Amer Bulls program style assessment of the candle pattern = bullish, however, today I saw what looked like the big 25k block, formerly a glass ceiling at .35, spread out into an array of 10k "stumbling blocks" from .32 to .35 so I would expect some comgestion in the .30 area to follow.
I'm thinking a (normally more-or-less dreaded) double top could form after testing the recent high. If it bounced off, we could see some consolodation in a declining wedge for a while since news may grow quiet for a while after the hearing. People may choose to try to trade their cost basis down and anticipate re-buying in the possible quiet spell.
However, if it pierces resistance in the .40 area it could keep going. It's a cliche but the "coiled spring" will get wound tighter as time goes on, understanding of the oppurtunity here sinks in with buyers, and supply of loose shares presumably continues to dry up.
One obvious strategy is to overwieght then reduce a bit on on upspike, to get cost basis down, which is why I think a double top is possible. On the other hand, a lot of people may get second thoughts about that, maybe they won't be able to get back in in time, in which case, that fuels a breakout to the upside.
