While I appreciate your comments, I am certain you are incorrect.
1. If you go to the Nasdaq.com site you will see when you add up all of the shares held at Blackrock subsidiaries AS AT 6/30/14 they owned 1.4 million shares (this would include both more active strategies (value etc) and passive strategies such as index funds as you suggested.
2. As at Aug 31/2014 Blackrock and its subs stated they now own 4.5 million shares.
3. Since August 15/2014 the value of the shares/company has declined significantly (by 2/3) as we all are well aware.
4. Therefore, index funds (which would still fall under the subsidiaries of Blackrock in the holdings list) in order to maintain index weightings would actually be required to SELL SHARES since the company now comprises a smaller portion of any applicable index on a relative basis (unless of course every other company lost 2/3 of its value as well, which we know is not the case!)
5. You have actually suggested the opposite, that even though this company has lost 2/3 of its market value that index funds would be buying MORE shares. That assumption is incorrect as it would clearly result in tracking error for the index fund due to being overweight VRNG relative to other components of the index.
Again, as VRNG’s market value decreased, index funds would rebalance by SELLING VRNG shares, not purchasing shares. The fact Blackrock has added shares at a time where the share price declined significantly, is contradictory to the idea and your suggestion that the increase is simply due too index funds rebalancing.
6. Given there has been a significant decrease in the company’s market value, but an increase in shares owned by Blackrock we can absolutely conclude this is not the ‘index fund’ / passive strategy buying.
Perhaps you don’t understand how index funds work but what I have stated above is factually correct.
In addition the filing states which subsidiaries are included, it is quite easy to do the math and look at what was disclosed at 6/30 by Nasdaq.com.
BlackRock Advisors, LLC – Listed at 6/30 –with 30k shares
BlackRock Asset Management Canada Limited – No investment listed at 6/30 (new)
BlackRock Fund Advisors – Largest at 6/30 –with 1.73 million shares
BlackRock Institutional Trust Company, N.A. – No investment listed at 6/30 (new)
BlackRock Investment Management, LLC – Listed at 6/30 – with 210k shares
Also, I ask a small favor, in the future if you are going to respond to my posts, please keep your attempts at condescending remarks to yourself. Your ‘upteenth time’ comment is a clear attempt at that.
This is a board for discussion about companies/stocks. I am new here and I am here to discuss stocks and nothing else. If you cannot accommodate my request, I ask you to disregard my future posts and move on.
Regards and good luck to you.
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