***from YMB
This is an interesting post by mellowmood77 on IHUB about GS analyst Paul Choi on AMRN and another stock ESPR.
his post is below:
July 17th price closed at $21.07 and the secondary was announced.
July 18th - July 23rd. 4 trading days. 73 million shares are traded and price drops to a low of $17.60. (First big retail exit. Mostly quick profit investors/day traders IMO).
July 31st - August 5th. 4 trading days. Volume begins to pick up again (Adcom leak?) And price begins to decline to a low of $16.37. Around 40 million shares traded during this period (Second retail exit. Longer term investors with weaker hands begin exiting IMO).
August 8 ADCOM announced after hours.
August 9 - August 12. 2 Trading days. You would expect this announcement to have the most volume over a longer period of time, but only 2 days of high volume here as most of the weak retail hands have already exited at this point. I believe stronger long term investors left here as fears of previous ADCOM set in. Volume of 43 million shares and price dropped to a low of $13.76.
It is impossible to say how many retail investors permanently left the stock as some probably came back at the lows. But I am near certain institutional ownership has increased while retail ownership has decreased with the way the shares were constantly absorbed in the $13.80's on level2.
Now to analyze the Goldman rating I'd like to look at a stock similar to Amarin, (has a drug candidate for CV indication)
ESPR:
December 13, 2018. Paul Choi initiates coverage of ESPR with a sell rating of $45. ESPR is trading at $55 the previous day. The price closes at $39 DEC 21.
Interesting to note GS has 5000 PUTS and 300k Shares of the stock. What did they do after initiating a sell rating? Bought 100,000 shares, presumably at the lows after the report. Sold all PUTS. In fact, Hedge funds increased their position 8% after the report.
Q1 2019. Goldman buys another 100,000 shares at depressed price levels. Hedge funds increase their positions by 16%. Accumulation is going on. Price ends up reaching a closing high of $53 in March. BUT, they are not done accumulating. GS's clients want more. Price goes back to $39.
Q2 2019. Goldman upgrades from sell to neutral with a price target of $50. Institutional ownership almost doubles (shares were absorbed by them at the $39 lows). Price reaches $52 May 24th.
May 29th 2019. Goldman initiates SELL rating at $52. Price drops to $34 Sep 4. Shares being absorbed.
Sep 16. 2019. GS upgrades from SELL to HOLD.
Rinse and repeat.
Institutional ownership before GS intitiation on ESPR: 27.9M
Institutional ownership after GS initiation on ESPR: 50M
I believe they are trying to do the same with Amarin. You will see Paul change stances many times in the near future.
***Theories like this (but w/o the DD) been floating around all day. Makes sense to me. GS purchased AMRN at $18. No way they do that if they think the value of this company is only $17.
Anything can happen, but I hoping the last few trading days are investors trying to get back in cheap become ICER, ADCOM, and label expansion. Might be a wild ride from now till EOY. I didn't post it here, but apparently Europe has already requested a PR for Vascepa and AMRN haven't even submitted the NDA for Europe yet. Canadas PR is up sometime next month if I remember correctly.