MB, trying to make sense of this situation is of great interest to me as well and I tend to agree with most all of your other posts. While Obit is right, in that we don't really know what Ackman did or didn't do during this drop, I tend to believe he may not have done much at all. If anything, I feel he could've increased his position at the bottom. Again, I don't know if doing so creates any undesirable situation for him by having a larger than 10% position...i.e., filings and what not. I will say, I find it interesting that he is just under 10% in his position.
Stating your guess that he could have sold 35m shares at around $6, actually, was not possible. I don't even think 35m total shares ever traded above $6 before the 1pm drop. I believe, roughly, 75-80m total shares traded during the 1-2:30pm drop where the price went from a little over $6 to around $3.25. More than 50% of the 75M+ shares traded during that period did so under $4.10 and over 75% of the 75M+ traded under $4.75. Again, I'm not saying it's not possible that Ackman wasn't in some way involved in the this, but looking at the numbers, I'm not sure it would have been to the scale that you might be thinking/guessing.
I have studied Ackman quite a bit, and I feel he may be sticking to his guns on his long position. I also believe there are several reasons he chose not to comment on the drop. First, I don't think it's as big of a deal to him as it is many here. He has said many times, he expects there to be many ST ups and downs in his LT bets and they usually don't phase him. Second, while he can be outspoken at times, I find him to be more reserved and less confrontational than most think he is. Last, Herbalife was about to or had received a huge bomb around the same time and I don't think he was ready to make himself available to any questioning about anything, especially that!
Again, just speculation that I'm willing to put out there...could be 100% right/wrong or somewhere in between.
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