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This One Is Too Nervous To Watch. Pfizer

This is a short blog full of twists. Try to get through it. First a five day chart of Pfizer. chart. In the past week it was up $1.05 and it was the 7th most activity traded stock on the NYSE most active list. It's in a breakout mode. Look at how it traded over the last three years. This breakout mode might last a few days, weeks or months. This stock has a history of moving somewhat slower than most stocks. A second quarter earnings report comes out July 30th. If it's good that could add a touch to the stock's price. Now this. As a general rule stocks and options on stocks in this particular price range are difficult to play and in this case everyone is following the same story. Fred down the street and John around the corner and Mark across town are all dialed into the same commentary. There is nothing that really gives you an edge when it comes to playing it. That's the problem. Here now is a look at the Pfizer "next-week-out" $30.00 series of Call optio
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The Topic of The Decimination of Good News

Aurina Pharmecetical Inc. I have talked about this one before. It has a Canadian history. Here is the news on it late last Friday in the last few miutes of trading and here is how the stock reacted. It closed the trading session at $28.00.
Today is Monday Oct.25th and my comments are after the fact comments. I have being playing this stock for years as have some of my friends. I missed the news of this happening when it happened. What a day of the week and what a time of the day for such an announcement of that magnitude! Retail Call option holders have to be out of their Call option positions that expire on a Friday by 3:00 p.m. or they run the risk of their brokerage houses selling them out. Option trading desks play by different rules. Image all the then "just-out-of-the money" Call positions, the 26, 27, 28 calls that would be trading for .03, or 04 or .05 cents a contract around 3:35 or 3:45 p.m. on that Friday. Suddenly they would be worth 100 or 200 or 300 hundred fold in just a matter of minutes. Million of dollars in profits could have being realized by insiders. (** Aurina options do not expire every Friday. They expire once every month. I believe the Oct22th was the end of a month cycle for Aurina options. The next ones expire Nov 19th 2012, however I am not 100% sure. Can anyone help me out with this?). The decimination of news is what I now want to talk about. The system and the people that have inside knowledge are sometimes given the opportunity to abuse these trading platforms for their own gains. Had the company waited until just after the markets closed to release their news they could have prevented much of this potential abuse. Or worst yet, they wanted this to happen to further line their pockets. It's all so unfair. Surely there were insiders who knew this takeover news was soon to be released and who jumped in and potentially made millions of dollars. That kind of trading unfortuanately sometimes happens and it's difficult to regulate. However in this situation it goes well beyond that. Traders with inside knowledge would have being able to buy in just after 3:30 p.m. knowing that the "out-of the-money" call options which once again would then have cost only pennies were about to explode in price in a matter of twenty minutes on this news.That is when these options were expiring! That is not fair pool. Many people in the past have lost money on this stock, particularly when it once did did a reverse stock split. The trading history of this stock has not being kind to many investors with many new rounds of additional financings. Aurina Pharmecetical should have released the news after the markets closed on the Friday or before the markets opened today on a Monday. (That is if they cared about corporate protocol). If they did the existing Call holders would be holding positions which were more expensive because a portion of their cost would have being for the time value part of the equasion. They wouldn't then have then made as much. What does it mean when a company suddenly becomes a takeover target? What also does in mean when it says that the new buyer is not necessarily obligated to do the deal? How much weight do you put on that statement? In the really big picture it could mean that talks are well on there way. Yet another new factor may come into play. Option players will now be making judgement calls on the next series of Call options, the Nov 19th Call options. Why? Well it still may not be to late to come to the party. Might Bristol Myers decide to raise their offer or might other pharmecetical companies decide also to make a run at it and offer more money? Speculators are attracted to price movements and the November 19th Calls would give them a fair amount of time if they thought the price might still go higher? Others might decide both the Calls and Puts are worth selling, in the hopes of the action on this stock dying down and the hopes of this stock staying in this price range.Let the games begin. ** to read previous blogs scroll to the upper left and follow the curser.

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