Hi pharma, as a general rule of thumb, bids and asks placed away...

Hi pharma, as a general rule of thumb, bids and asks placed away from the market where their volumes are unlikely to be met from a historical perspective (average daily volume/volatility) are just smokes and mirrors. The scenarios that you have mentioned are all valid strategies to toy with the market and exist in practically every financial instruments with a bid/ask nature.

As for CDY however, of the three scenarios that you have listed, the scalping (building up bids in hopes their ask parcels one or two places away from market will be wiped) scenario is very unlikely as the stock does not provide enough active volatility – not to mention the spreads are made much thinner from a percentage point of view after consolidation. The other two however are very plausible and definitely have occurred on CDY lately.

In regards to the numerous 200k bids pre-open routinely witnessed, I can’t really offer you much other than there are prying participants within CDY‘s market capable of making 600k+ (12 million+ before consolidation) bids in one go - but, smokes and mirrors nonetheless.. What’s actually important in CDY’s case instead is price action, and as we saw on Friday it was excellent. Any positive MK announcements/mergers/deals on top of it may just be the trigger we need to set the motions into a proper valuation for this company.