The Power Of Coincidence?

Thanks to poster Kobiashi we can take a look (see below) at trends over the past 16 days since June 9, the last day of major trading after the awards, when volume was 3.8 million. Starting on June 10, major trading dried up and all the excitement died with it.

As you will quickly observe, that trend changed dramatically with the volume of Friday's trading. News of a buy-out offer for ERHC Energy (OTC BB symbol: ERHE) had been published the night before in Upstream Online but not (as it normally is) circulated to investors via Raging Bull or InvestorsHub or this blog. Yet volume was sharply higher than any day since June 9. During late afternoon trading Friday, the stock suddenly made a run to $0.47, more than 25 percent above the low of the day ($0.38).

Was it just a coincidence that trading was 500 percent more than the day before, or 300 percent more than the day before that, or 200 percent of the day before that, or 400 percent of the day before that, or 500 percent of the day before that, or 700 percent of the trading on June 20? Or did some investors get word of the UpstreamOnline article and buy on it, prompting others to dump some 150,000 shares in the last five minutes and drive it back down to $0.42?

A reliable poster told us markvol1, who reportedly bought 100,000 shares and was responsible for driving the price up - and is usually the one who communicates with all of us in his JDA updates - knew nothing of the buy-out offer. (Update: In a post to Raging Bull, Markvol1 implies that he did not buy any shares on Friday.)
Update, 8:25am, 7/5/05: Markvol1 now informs us, for reasons we cannot fathom, that he urinated last Friday, and also did buy some shares, but not 100,000:

Joe, I did buy some shares on Friday. Did I buy 100K shares? I wish to hell I did. But, I bought an amount much less than 100K.

So, if that was not the basis for the run-up, what then was?
With 3.5 million shares changing hands, isn't it a little naive to believe that no one else acted on the news?

The news of the buy-out offer depressed the stock a penny in overnight trading on the Berlin exchange (Frankfurt trading was unchanged, with no volume), and so far is not being picked up by Reuters, Dow Jones, Bloomberg News, or any of the major financial news organizations. And as long as investors don't feel it necessary to spend a buck or two to reach those organizations at their headquarters in New York by telephone, the news agencies will not respond when they have already been scooped by a mid-tier competitor.br>
That is why we should expect to lose a little more of our money tomorrow.

1-Jul-05 0.42 0.47 0.38 0.42 / 3,574,900 \ 0.42
30-Jun-05 0.45 0.45 0.43 0.44 / 720,500 \ 0.44
29-Jun-05 0.46 0.46 0.43 0.44 / 1,043,700 \ 0.44
28-Jun-05 0.47 0.47 0.43 0.45 / 1,845,200 \ 0.45
27-Jun-05 0.49 0.49 0.47 0.47 / 905,500 \ 0.47
24-Jun-05 0.51 0.51 0.49 0.49 / 747,500 \ 0.49
23-Jun-05 0.48 0.51 0.48 0.50 / 905,800 \ 0.50
22-Jun-05 0.50 0.51 0.48 0.49 / 1,900,000 \ 0.49
21-Jun-05 0.52 0.52 0.50 0.51 / 910,900 \ 0.51
20-Jun-05 0.54 0.54 0.52 0.52 / 583,400 \ 0.52
17-Jun-05 0.54 0.55 0.53 0.53 / 965,200 \ 0.53
16-Jun-05 0.54 0.56 0.53 0.54 / 700,400 \ 0.54
15-Jun-05 0.54 0.59 0.50 0.54 / 1,607,300 \ 0.54
14-Jun-05 0.57 0.57 0.53 0.53 / 998,100 \ 0.53
13-Jun-05 0.60 0.60 0.57 0.58 / 576,900 \ 0.58
10-Jun-05 0.64 0.65 0.57 0.59 / 1,827,100 \ 0.59