(Very Important Update At Bottom…Scroll Down)
I’m a little hesitant to post this since I can’t, for the life of me, imagine why something like this would be leaked to Medisys. If there was a leak (and it looks like there was), I always assumed it was because of negligence, or because some low level staffer was trying to make a few bucks. To assume that this was part of some massive Liberal conspiracy or that Martin was involved seems a little bit rich.
Regardless, here’s the lead to MK Braaten’s post:
The volume of shares traded for Paul Martin linked Medisys Income Trust shares the day before the Income Trust announcement is way to high to be a “co-incidence”. The volume increased 3400% from the prior day, and the following day, dropped back down about the same amount.
Paul Martins personal doctor started a medical company called Medisys Income Trust, a chain of private health care clinics located across Canada.
The day before the Goodale income trust announcement, the volume of Medisys shares traded for the day went from 5,714 on November 21, to 203,953 oNovemberer 22. On November 23, the shares traded dropped back down to 6,220.
I’m hoping someone can provide a logical explanation for this because, scanning the comments of the various blogs which have linked to this, I haven’t seen one yet.
I won’t comment on this story since I know absolutely nothing about Income Trusts but it does raise very important points:
1. This story won’t die. A lot of people made money on the Income Trust leak and some of them will, inevitably, have ties to the Liberals. Because a lot of people on Bay Street have ties to the Liberals. As people dig through the money trail, rumours are going to continue to swirl.
2. This is the type of thing where blogs could play a major role in the election. I imagine there are enough pissed off Blogging Tories out there who will sift through every single transaction on Bay Street to try and find connections.
Anyways, I’m hoping someone who understands stock trading better than I do can post about how suspicious people should be about the information presented in Braaten’s story. Is this as out of the ordinary as it looks?
[cross-posted to CTV Weblog]
UPDATE: There’s a good debate going on in the comments section of this post, so be sure to check it out. You might learn something about stock trading; I know I have.
Also, I was sent this chart for the year long trading volume of Medisys and, in this context, the leap doesn’t look as dramatic. There was also a day of trading of over 500,000 Medisys shares a little over two years ago. Take a look at the long term graph:
So, while it’s still an odd coincidence, the Medisys story is certainly not the smoking gun many are making it out to be.
That said, there’s still a lot of fishy stuff going on out there. Goodale’s meeting with several Bay Street investors for starters. And MK Braaten has some more stuff up about insider trading.