I posted this earlier, on a Yahoo! stock chat board, but now, today's NYSE trading in Schering-Plough would seem to confirm this NASDAQ After-Hours session of last night was an entirely "arranged" spike in prices. Schering is off about 30 cents, again, this morning as I write this.
A caveat: This is simply speculation, based on years of trading, and advising traders, brokers and market-makers, here -- but these "NASDAQ After-Hours" trades look to be "make-whole", or "reversing" trades:
. . . .Time -- Price -- Volume17:11 -- $16.7604 -- 80,415. . .
16:18 -- $16.81 -- 20,837
16:18 -- $16.81 -- 31,274
16:01 -- $15.901 -- 500. . . .
The large ones are more than $1.30 above the NYSE close, yesterday, and are now over $1.60 above this morning's trading -- more than 10 percent ABOVE prevailing fair market prices.
When aggregated, the "out-of-line" trades amount to a volume of 132,526 Schering shares. Wow.
Did some broker promise to refund a series of blocks, to an institution, if Schering did not rise, from $16.30? Did a large trader allege it was defrauded by someone when it bought in (presumably at, or above, $16)?
Was this a way to settle quietly, reversing the trades -- at inflated prices -- in the NASDAQ after-hours session? It has been quite a while (over a month) since Schering traded at or near $16.80. Were I a motivated SEC compliance sleuth, I'd go take a close look at the NYSE tape, on that day, for blocks that match these, in the aggregate, at around these prices (less one month's worth of interest "carry").
But what do I know?
Cheers!
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