The putative conspirators, whose name or names have not been made public, pulled off their heist with ease. They bought a bunch of what Wall Street calls "puts." A put is a piece of paper guaranteeing its owner the right to sell 100 shares of stock at a stated price within a specified period of time. In the case of this bank job, the period of time was as little as five days.

With Bear Stearns stock selling at over a share, somebody bought the right to sell almost 6 million shares at a share. To make money on these puts, the price of Bear Stearns stock would have to lose more than half its value fast. In fact, in the days immediately after the unknown person or persons bought all those puts, Bears Stearns stock dropped like a duck shot out of the sky, to a price of a share or less. The persons behind the scheme then bought Bear Stearns shares at or less and exercised the puts, thereby selling them for and pocketing the difference.

How could someone know that in a matter of days the fifth-largest trading house on Wall Street would see the value of its stock drop to next to nothing?
Then with the price of stock still above , somebody bought puts giving them the right to sell the stock at five dollars a share–which is about what you would expect to be the price of the shares of a company in bankruptcy. Matsumoto quotes one broker as saying, "When you buy strikes [puts] when the stock is trading over , you either have to be manipulating, or you have to have insider information." Another broker quoted in his report remarked, "Nobody in their right mind would buy that put unless you knew what was going down."

The timing of the purchase of the puts screams out that a well-placed person inside Bear Stearns was telling someone on the outside of the firm’s increasing confusion and division. At a crucial moment when rumors were rife on Wall Street that Bear Stearns customers would not be able to withdraw their money, the stock market was hit by a large number of orders to sell Bear Stearns stock. That augmented the force of the rumors of insolvency already working to depress the price, even as panicky customers fell over one another getting their money out. There are too many disastrous coincidences here to be explained just by bad luck.

The name of the bearer of this bad luck remains hidden. A spokeswoman for the Chicago Board of Options Exchange, where the puts were bought, has refused to tell Bloomberg the name.

I put in a large volume sell limit order on a particular stock about a month ago and although the stock has hit my limit price numerous times, the order is still not filled. Would I have a better chance of getting the order filled faster if I broke the large order into a set of smaller orders that, combined, equal the volume of my current large order. I would think that execution time will be the same, since I am allowing partial fills. For instance, would a partial fill of 10 out of 100 shares have the same probability of getting executed in a certain period of time than an order where 10 was the total volume? Any insight on this would be helpful.

Thanks a bunch.

Can I do this regularly as long as I make enough to cover the fees and bring in a profit? Are there additional fees for buying/selling on the same day? Also, I heard these types of fast trades are taxed high. Are there differences between buying and selling on the same day versus buying to hold onto the stock for an extended period of time?

I have a timeshare I do not use and would like to sell it outright without waiting to long and without giving upfront fees to do it. If you have any advice or know of a company that just buys your timeshare without having you wait for a period of time please let me know. Thanks.