This is the first post of our new series, Sketchy Trades, which we introduced here.
On July 9th at 7:30 in the morning, AEHR put out a press release essentially saying that a major customer placed a large order for one of their products.
Within one minute the stock went from $72 to $77, and 21 minutes later it printed $83.54, up 23% from the prior close (chart below).
What’s most interesting about this is that despite the price move being clearly attributable to that new information, the order was already weeks old by then.
Someone at the purchasing company had to approve the money, issue a purchase order, and likely wire a deposit
A month prior, AEHR announced that the customer “has also provided Aehr with a forecast for additional systems this calendar year” and the stock was up 11% within ten minutes that morning too.
So right off the bat, even when forward guidance is given in advance, the market still moves once it comes out that an actual order was placed.
This gives us an enticing starting point for our core experiment:
“If we believe that press releases containing big purchase orders result in immediate stock moves, at what point in the chain can we know about that order early?”
What we have below was definitely not easy to find, but by the end, you’ll see that nothing is impossible with enough will and quantitative muscle.