Some Rudimentary DD on MURF..
There is not that much out there on the market maker MURF that showed up on the bid side just before the market closed yesterday, as Z732Z brought to everyone's attention earlier. I have uncovered a few bits and pieces of information that everyone might appreciate.
It seems that MURF represents the private brokerage firm, Murphy and Durieu.
Address: 120 Broadway Fl 17
New York, NY 10271-0002
Phone: 212-618-0900
MURF sitting on the bid means that the price should be stabilized around .002 (which is a very good thing - strong base of support). He appears to be an institutional buyer, which leads me to believe that Bederra might be using him in conducting its buyback. I want to be clear that this is circumstantial on my part at this time. At the same time, for a new MM to show up out of the blue during which time the company has PR'ed plans to initiate a buyback of up to have of the float (~200 million shares). That's an awfully big coincidence, in my view.
I have done some digging and found several instances of MURF popping up the past several years on the bid side of stocks that have then experienced substantial increases in their share price.
- Most recently, he showed up on the bid in WAMUQ last month between 1/28/10 and 2/3/10 and the PPS subsequently raised from .164 to a high of .25.
- He showed up on the bid in TFZP on 12/8/06 when the stock hit .48 then stayed around 12/12/06 when it hit a high of 1.44.
- There's also references to him showing up in CSHD back in 2006 and there being a subsequent rise in the PPS there as well, but that ticker no longer exists so I can't verify the accuracy of this.
- Other then that, there are scattered references to him showing up on the ask and the PPS dropping significantly (selling lots of shares), but I've found no concrete examples.
As stervc noted in post #23734, the fact that he showed up on the bid side likely means that he's acting as an institutional buyer. I'd be very worried however if he showed up on the ask side, because it would most likely mean that he's acting as a seller and that would be awful for the PPS. So that's just what I managed to track down in the past hour or so.
If anyone has anything else to add or correct, please feel free.
AI
