Friday, April 16, 2010

FAS/FAZ Seeing Record 2010 Trading Volume (FAS, FAZ, GS)

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You know the news on Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (NYSE: GS) today about being charged with civil fraud by the SEC over its role in some mortgage derivatives.  We won’t bother telling you that GS is down over 10% at $164.37 (-10.8%) on 75,000,000 shares as of 2:10 PM EST.  What is more important is that the triple leverage ETFs have gone berserk in trading volume:

  • Direxion Daily Financial Bear 3X Shares (NYSE: FAZ) is up almost 8.7% at $11.99 on 158,000,000 shares at 2:11 PM EST.
  • Direxion Daily Financial Bull 3X Shares (NYSE: FAS) is down 8.5% at $106.50 on 39.4 million shares.  That is far from a record in trading volume for the year because traders tend to bet directional in these.

March 11, 2010 the FAZ traded 110 million shares, and this traded over 100 million shares on only 3 days in February and 2 days in January.  That is a record for the year and there is still almost 2 hours to go before the market closes.

For the FAS, the 39+ million shares is the highest Feb. 9 when it traded over 48 million shares and it had higher volume than today’s 2:11 snapshot on only 5 sessions from January 1 to before the Feb. 9 day.

If you add up the two triple-leverage ETFs, today will mark a record day for the combined volume so far in 2010.

JON C. OGG


Analyst Outlines Palm Scenario (PALM)

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Palm, Inc. (NASDAQ: PALM) is trading up on a positive research call this morning oin the chances of a buyout.

RBC has maintained an Outperform rating on Palm with an $11 target.  The firm has said it has a $10 to $14 breakup value and it sees a better chance than not of a deal getting done.

The stock trades an average of 27,360,600 and the 52-week trading range is $3.65 to $18.09.

At 8:58 AM EST we have seen 1,145,896 shares trade hands and the stock is up 3.9% at $5.61.

JON C. OGG


AEterna Zentaris Stalls on Secondary (AEZS)

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AEterna Zentaris Inc. (NASDAQ: AEZS) is killing the week’s gains after it announced that it has received commitments from institutional investors to purchase $15 million of securities in a registered direct offering for an aggregate of approximately 11.1 million common shares of its capital at a price of $1.35 per share.   The company will issue warrants to acquire an aggregate of approximately 4.4 million common shares at an exercise price of $1.50 per share.

At 8:51 AM EST this is down 18% at $1.35 on 967,000 shares.  The 52-week range is $0.75 to $3.25 and it trades 985,000 shares per day.

This stock was under $1.00 less than 5 days ago and shares were up over $1.70 this week.

JON C. OGG