Just broke down JP Morgans trading, looks like they were acting for IGO JV in lead up to the bid. I start with the premiss that JPM are no idiots, have no real business buying and selling relatively small amounts of a junior explorer stock, and if they did they would be making money from all their trading efforts... In reality they lost money on all those trades leading up to the TO offer, most when selling down hard from 27th Oct when the well flagged disappointing depth extension drill assays were released. In summary:
Similar amount of buys and sells, but interesting how they bought up big in a few days before the assays were released then immediately sold hard into the release. In fact, they net sold 200,000 shares on the 27th Oct to help club the price down from 57c to 48c, so the rest of trading was just to help keep up the downward momentum while not actually accumulating any shares.
Obviously, they then accumulated 5% of the stock at 51c into a 50c TO offer shortly after it was announced. Nobody pays more than the TO price unless they are confident of a higher offer or they are buying on 'arrangement' with the TO party to be looked after out wide after the fact. No reason for large investment bank like JPM to be mucking around with loss making trades on a speccy junior in the first place. No reason a 'trading arm' of JPM or the fund it's working for would transition to TO arbitrage speculator either, that is two very different trade strategies run by very different funds.
All good, usual games pre and during a TO imo. JPM buying at 51c just adds to my belief that a higher offer is coming be it from a new TO party or simply to sweeten the deal and get shareholders over the line...
GLTAH
