re: Official Erin Energy (ERN) thread

im thinking about just taking my losses and bailing at this point

The graphic is a brief overview that will give those of us who are still in this some idea about how long this could potentially trade sideways.

LINK

Actually, I think the short game is coming to an end soon. Volume is consistently low and bid-ask spreads are large, telling me that many shares are locked up and not available for trading; the only reason I can come up with is shorting. The 8% spike this morning is due to less than 80k shares traded, which should not be the case for this company. Yesterday had a large spike too, and less than 250k shares were traded. That's not even $1 million worth of daily volume. The bid-ask spreads are typically a 1% share price difference, which is pretty significant. Sometimes, I have seen spreads wide enough that a decrepit 90 year old woman with cataracts could comfortably parallel park an 18 wheeler, with a trailer attached, in there.

And I'm not sure how accurate realshortdata.com is, but the daily information I've looked on there seems to confirm my suspicions.

I think I've mentioned that in past posts, but nothing came of it then. Of course, the only technical I look at/mentioned was the RSI. I'm also not sure about $4 being much of a resistance level. Every dollar amount seems to be a psychological barrier, but ERN hasn't really gotten up to $4 to test that barrier since this month started until now.

Your post implies you're a technicals guy. I'm more of a fundamentals guy who also feels around to get the market's sentiment. Do you have much success with technicals? Every time I have looked at a stock or been recommended a stock through technicals, the stocks have done poorly. I ask because I would like to know if there are any other basic indicators I could use to help with investing/trading decisions, but I want to know they have good success rates.

There is an increased short position on this. I'm not sure this is entirely dangerous as I don't believe we see any real catalyst until at least Q3. Q2 revenue might provide something. Q3 more. They're on track to start Micoene developmental well Q4 and drill Q1 16.

I say entirely because the float is barley floating right now. I'm guessing almost 3MM shares are shorted, and the effective float isn't that great as compared to this. I think last report short interest went up about 8% to about $2.5MM.

Again, I don't see anything igniting a short squeeze, but if there were to be something, I'd hate to be caught as I think it would unravel in a great big hurry.

I'll check a couple of other markets, but this is what I got this morning with respect to shorting this stock:

"Your sell short order cannot be processed. This security is considered Hard to Borrow."

Likely be able to short this on IB, or some other direct routing platform, but good luck to average retail guys try to short on TD or ET, or whatever they use to "trade."

I've been buying. When are Q2 results coming? And can we expect the large amount of revs to be on Q3 books since the oil was just sitting?

Short interest up a bunch as suspected.

I think they expire and don't get exercised because the buyer or buyers don't have the money to exercise.

So far, so good. I have their money.

Because they could have made more exercising and they didn't. Don't know for sure, but that's pretty conclusive. They don't have to exercise, they can wait for someone, in this case me, to buy to close. They didn't exercise, and anything in the money is exercised automatically on expiration unless the buyer calls their broker and tells them not to.

I called their bluff. They didn't have the cash or margin to exercise. I kept their premium on deep in the money puts twice now.