Did Detrick's Comments on The Spring '17 Elk Grove Mall Opening Move HHC Stock Price?
February 27, 2016 Anyone with even a small degree of familiarity with stocks knows prices can change for a variety of reasons. Sometim...
https://www.elkgrovenews.net/2016/02/did-detricks-comments-on-spring-17-elk.html
February 27, 2016
Anyone with even a small degree of familiarity with stocks knows prices can change for a variety of reasons. Sometimes it takes nothing more than rumors.
During their Wednesday night meeting Elk Grove City Councilman Steve Detrick said that under a best case scenario, Howard Hughes Corporation (stock ticker symbol HHC) could open the Outlet Collection at Elk Grove in Spring 2017. Detrick went on to say that HHC has leases on 40-percent of the space at the unfinished mall, and once they reach 50-percent, construction would resume.
On Thursday, a story was posted here regarding Detrick's HHC comments. As part of our normal routine, we also linked the feature on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. On Twitter and Instagram, we included respective handles for Detrick, the City of Elk Grove and HHC.
For those not familiar with those social media platforms, by including the handle for Detrick, the City of Elk Grove and HHC, we can reach more viewers. This exercise landed the story on a social media platform specifically designed for equity traders.
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That platform is Stocktwits.com, and our story was linked by a user who saw it on our Twitter feed. While our story was posted during regular trading hours (30 minutes before the 1 p.m. PST market close) on Thursday, it was picked up on Twitter and linked on Stocktwits.
Within 40 minutes of our posting, after markets closed, the link appeared on Stocktwits. There were two entries regarding our story.
It is important to note the stock market was closed for the day. However, an interesting thing happened for the balance of Thursday and on Friday and it was the number, and more importantly, the type of visitors drawn to EGN from that link.
From those two entries, we received in excess of a 100 visitors to the story. While about 90-percent were from consumer type IP addresses internationally, we also were visited by HHC and proprietary IP addresses that linked back to large East Coast white shoe law firms and more importantly to hedge funds.
During Thursday trading HHC's price opened at $96.62 and by the end of the day closed at $92.02. However on Friday. HHC 's opening price was $92.50 and closed the day at $94.19, up $2.19 or up 2.36-percent for the day - a very nice daily increase.
It should be noted that there were 149,000 shares of HHC traded on Friday, below their average daily trading of 195,000 shares.
Obviously, Detrick's comments were significant enough to be picked-up from EGN's Twitter feed and posted twice on Stocktwit. From there, hedge funds and white shoes followed the links to the EGN story.
Did Detrick's positive comments on HHC's push up its stock price yesterday? There is no way of knowing and in the interest of being conservative on such claims, we will surmise Detrick's rosy words and the nifty daily move were a coincidence. Furthermore, not surprisingly, the story did not make its way to the all-important financial news.
Nonetheless, the Elk Grove City Council members should be aware that when speaking of the "Ghost Mall" as others have called it, their comments are being watched, and the price could have easily dropped if just a few words were changed. Now that would not have put head honchos at HHC in a jubilant mood, would it?
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5 comments
I seriously doubt that any comment from our city would cause HHC the tiniest flinch. Not only that, but for some reason the Casino was lost somewhere in the comment. Their head is focused on the east coast and most likely trying to dump the whole Outlet property on the Indian Casino and get outta town while the gettin's good. Not only that, but I heard that 40% mentioned 2-3 months ago...old news!
I highly doubt Detrick's comments or EGN's coverage was reflected in the stock price. If it were, you would have seen an increase in trading volume, not a decrease. What was observed was merely a coincidence.
How much will the Elk Grove City Council's stock go up if "The Dump Detrick Campaign" is successful come November 2016?
The worst part is if The Mentor leaked confidential information to the general public that was not otherwise disclosed by HHC to its investors. To prevent the selective disclosure of inside information, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) requires publicly held corporations to file an official report disclosing information so that it is available to all parties. In addition, let's also hope The Mentor did not benefit from inside information and buy HHC stock based on that private information. The SEC is much tougher than the FPPC!
Interesting announcement for sure! I emailed City Manager Laura Gill to ask if what was said was true – no response!
How many times have we heard grandiose comments from the dais so that a council member or two can garner media attention? In my opinion, when these turgid announcements prove false, it does a disservice to the people of Elk Grove.
Funny observation though: If all of the other council members have met with HHC, why didn’t any of them flip on their microphones to substantiate the announcement? What? Miss an opportunity for a news headline or sound bite of their own!
I have a source who told me work will most likely begin in January of 2017. Therefore, given winter weather and other setbacks that always occur with a project of this magnitude, the best the people of Elk Grove could hope for is the mail opening by the 2017 holiday season.
It would behoove the Council not to say a word until we can hear the deafening sounds of hammers coming from the mall – music for our future shopping sprees! Hell, we might even have a party in the parking lot to celebrate and serve the workers lunch!
What’s even more interesting, and even more telling, is no comment from the Howard Hughes Corporation!
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