that's what I get for not digging deep enough. I did a cursory read through and saw 90 cent value somewhere. Had to dump it at a penny loss. Could have been much worse.
While the naked shorts have suppressed ECU daily since the merger announcement on 6/24, it is equally imperative to their modus operandi that they simultaneously short and suppress AUMN. Otherwise, if AUMN was not trading at the conversion of 20:1, but perhaps trading at a higher ratio of say 25:1 (less percentage decline to ECU), then that would attract additional buyers to ECU--exactly what the manipulative entity(s) does not want to occur.
This is the main reason why the ratio has rarely changed from 20:1 over the past 7 weeks. It is not really due to the more common pre-merger arbitrage where one company's stock is purchased while the other stock is simultaneously sold for a net (hedged) profit whenever the ratio gets out of line. Rather, in this case both companies are undergoing one-directional selling to the downside in an attempt to either derail the merger, or force large ECU shareholders to give up and dump the stock.
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