I think that count must include these cancelled trades below:
19:14 $ 227.48 1,500,000
19:14 $ 227.48 1,500,000 - Cancelled Trade
19:14 $ 227.48 1,600,000
19:14 $ 227.48 1,600,000 - Cancelled Trade
19:13 $ 227.48 1,767,929
19:13 $ 227.48 1,767,929 - Cancelled Trade
I don't know what happened there - if it was a mistake or someone doing something on purpose?
I've figured it out Daimler's trade folks.
First, Daimler held exactly 4,867,929 shares as of last filing. Looking back at MikeC's post, someone put up three block trades after hours on Oct. 17 2014 totalling
exactly 4,867,929 shares at $227.48, which is the closing price of that day. That means they almost certainly gave the large order to their broker asking for the closing price of that day (more on why below). If you look at the chart that day, there was a very steady decline from noon until the close that did not match the NASDAQ chart.. this was very likely the broker executing the trade for their books, then giving Daimler the entire trade at the closing price. This lines up with the fact that the 10+ million shares traded that day was double the amount the day before and after.
Now why would Daimler want the closing price that day? Oct 17 happens to be the third friday of the month, meaning options expiry. In all likelihood this means Daimler's hedge from last year consisted of a series of options that expired this month. If someone can find information on large options trades/open interest that expired last week I would be curious to know.
In this case the broker probably got a better average price and made a very handsome profit on the stock trade, probably at least $1-2/share. Now before we get up in arms that they ripped someone off the Daimler or manipulated the market, remember that they promised Daimler the closing price on a $1.1B trade. If Elon made some tweet or said something on CNBC that sent the stock up in the last hour of trading, they could have easily lost tens of millions. It would likely had to be one of the really big global brokers with a close relationship with Daimler to take on this trade.
In terms of how this affects the stock going forward, it's mixed. You lose one big long term institutional holder and it goes to much less sticky institutions/individuals who may turn over the stock more. A larger shareholder base means that all else the same you have more herd mentality in volatile conditions, but also more ability to absorb small groups of buyers/sellers to lower volatility. The one upside is you have one less entity that can send a very large impactful sell order like this.
TL;DR - Daimler got a closing price trade for their entire holdings on Oct 17 (last week). This affirms that they are done the trade already, and also indicates that their hedge from last year was likely a set of options that expired Oct 17.
Hope that paints a clearer picture of how this affected TSLA's stock price this last week, I wrote a bit more about why it made business sense for Daimler to exit from their perspective in the other thread if anyone's interested.
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