Tuesday, January 18, 2005

ERHC Share Volume, Price Explodes At Opening Bell

Exploding out of the box at the opening bell, ERHC moved up two cents on 200,000 shares of volume in the first 8 minutes of trading - compared to 25,000 volume last Friday in the first hour and half (and even that day ended with more than 1 million shares sold).

At the 4pm close, ERHC was up $0.08, a 17.02 percent gain on the day - and the news of awards still has not officially hit. Volume ended at $2,150,367, with nearly a million shares selling in the last 50 minutes, most in lots of 2500.

At 3:06pm EST, with 1.551,191 shares having traded, the price was holding steady at .51, the high of the day.

At 2:28pm EST, 64,500 shares traded in 11 lots at .51, up $0.04 for the day. Volume stood at 1,413,311.

At noon Eastern Time, the volume stood at 743,285 and the share price at $0.50, up $0.03 close to its high so far of $0.505. By 1:23, when a volume spurt was pushing voume to 1,148,000, there had been more than 40 straight buys totaling more than 200,000 shares at the $0.50 ask, but unaccountably no improvement in the price. The bid moved to $0.50 and the ask moved briefly to $0.505 for a buy totaling 43,451 shares at 1:29pm EST.

In morning trading, volume reached 328,000 by 9:48am, but the share price met resistance from sellers at $0.49, stalling the rally almost before it started. At 10am EST, the bid was $0.48 and the ask $0.49 on volume of 407,490.

But minutes later, at 10:04am EST, the share price finally broke the $0.50 resistance level for the first time in a month and traded once at $0.505, at that point up $0.35 for the day. Observers on message boards predicted a share high of $0.58 for the day, with a close in the $0.53 range. At 10:09am EST, volume surpassed 550,000 shares. At 10:30am it was at 632,980.

Earlier, large blocks were trading steadily at $.049, up from the opening at .47 and a brief dip to $0.46. More than 10 blocks of 10,000+ shares traded by 9:40am EST. The largest was 25,000 shares.

The movement came following reinforced promises from Nigeria's oil minister that awards would be announced in the second round bidding for oil-rich blocks of the Nigeria-Sao Tome and Principe Joint Development Zone off West Africa in the Gulf Of Guinea, and broader hints that ERHC will come away with operatorship in at least one and probably two of the five blocks on offer.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Will the dam break tomorrow or will they do their best to choke it?

...Joe Shea said...

We'll figure that out tomorrow. But the late surge and the close at the high - instead of a lower price reflecting daytraders selling at end of day - says good things to me. I am looking for a slow, steady two-week rise to the awards. This was a very good day, indeed.