
Fica o gráfico...... ainda ninguém sabe o que realmente se passou com esta acção... e a relação que teve com a AAPLE...... Não percebi muito bem história que me estava a passar ao lado, mas no twitter não se falava de outra coisa. Alguém tem + pormenores.
A familiar element to any initial stock offering is the excruciatingly long list of “risk factors” a company lists in its filing. It’s a legal exercise in backside coverage that combines the blindingly obvious with the borderline disingenuous. So it’s not surprising that Bats Global Markets listed a full 19 pages of risk factors for its Friday IPO, covering everything from “intense competition” in the company’s business of high-frequency asset trading to the possibility of regulatory changes. What you won’t find in that long list, however, is the following:
–”Our trading platform may blow up and cause a mini ‘flash crash’ in the world’s hottest stock, Apple (AAPL), pushing the price down 9 percent and forcing a temporary halt in trading.”
–”We might come back a few minutes later and crash our own shares.”
–”We may have to pull our IPO altogether.”
–”Such a sequence of events could raise basic questions about robot trading and depress the already low confidence of everyday investors in the fairness of the stock market.”
All that came to pass on March 23, the day Bats went public, as described by Bloomberg’s Nick Baker and Nikolaj Gammeltoft. Hours after Bats halted trading–its shares having plunged to mere pennies from the $15 IPO opening price–CEO Joe Ratterman issued a statement that “in the wake of today’s technical issues, which affected the trading of certain stocks, including that of Bats, we believe withdrawing the IPO is the appropriate action to take for our company and our shareholders.”
The Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodities Futures Trading Commission already blame speed traders for exaggerating the sell-off in the May 2010 “flash crash,” in which the Dow fell 600 points in five minutes before recovering. And the Wall Street Journal reported that the SEC is looking into the cozy relationships of high-frequency firms, including Bats, and exchanges.
Bats’s long list of risk factors does mention the flash-crash investigation, and the possibility that “the SEC could take actions that ultimately reduce trading volumes” and narrow the speed-traders’ advantage. This section, under the heading “System limitations, failures or securities breaches could harm our business,” could prove more relevant to the IPO disaster:
Our business depends on the integrity and performance of our computer and communications systems. If our systems cannot expand to cope with increased demand or otherwise fail to perform, we could experience unanticipated disruptions in service, slower response times and delays in the introduction of new products and services. These consequences could result in trading outages, lower trading volumes, financial losses, decreased customer service and satisfaction and regulatory sanctions. Our markets have experienced occasional systems failures and delays in the past and could experience future systems failures and delays.
Indeed, here’s how Bloomberg describes the sequence of events on Friday:
A single trade for 100 shares executed on a Bats venue briefly sent Apple down to $542.80, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The order was executed at 10:57 a.m. New York time. Two more transactions, which sent the stock back above $598, were made before the halt. The stock stayed around that level once trading resumed five minutes later. Bats sent a notice about 10 minutes before the Apple trade saying it was investigating “system issues” affecting companies with ticker symbols ranging between A and BF. Apple’s is AAPL. Bats’s ticker is BATS.
Apple, which held a somewhat more successful IPO on Dec. 12, 1980 (at $22 a share), finished the day down $3.29, at $596.05.