Check with 100's of other stocks that had multi-times the normal shares that all traded the same way on Friday's witching. What is your explanation of that?
The shelf had 30 million remaining. If all were used at $17.79, that would account for roughly 1.7 million shares. If options expiration accounted for 1/4 million or even 1 million, we are still far short of the volume spike.
Could it be as X-ter is fond of saying "games will be played". If you wanted to trade large blocks of shares incognito, what better time to jump in than during options expiration. We're still looking at each other wondering what happened.