Saturday, January 10, 2009

Hanky panky in the stock market




Ah, to be a hedge fund manager with billions to play with, as opposed to being me and playing with $5,000.

Look at the picture (in fact, click on it to make it larger).

Do you see what I am seeing?

Low price: less than a dollar, a few cents.
High price: $41+.

This happened for a few minutes this week (friday, if I recall correctly).

Quite simply, somebody made bank - literally.

To keep the math simple, lets say the low price was a half dollar per share (it wasn't - it was something like 40 cents or some such, but lets say 50 cents).

Now, for each dollar that you invested, multiply this by times 41 times 2.

Now, imagine you are a hedge fund guy with inside information and multiply this by 26,000 shares....

This was a blip on the radar, happened for a few minutes, a glitch in the system if you will.

Inside traders love those glitches.

Currently, saturday, the price is $25 - still not bad if you have invested at 40 cents per share.

Do it yourself - symbol CAR for Avis Budget Group.

This volatile market is a haven for unscrupulous traders who dump billions into a stock, watch it rise and then pull the rug, leaving the not-clued-in cattle holding a worthless stock.


PS
Glitch in the system?
Someone check with their broker about this and get back to me please.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is very likely to be a trade reported in error. Call your broker and have him pull time and sales to check.

Anon

AmericanGoy said...

Possible.