Leaked Information and Kodak Stock

On Monday, July 27 2020, a local news affiliate in Rochester, NY (home of Kodak HQ) tweeted that a "BIG announcement" was coming concerning a deal between Kodak and the federal government. This set off a week of unprecedented trading activity in the company's stock (KODK).

At around 12pm on Monday, the following was tweeted and deleted some time later:

"BIG announcement expected tomorrow from Kodak and the U.S. government regarding "a new manufacturing initiative." News 8 WROC Rochester will be all over it."

In the next 30 minutes, about $800k was invested in the stock, which pushed the price up 14% from the morning's open. A Redditor picked up on the story later that afternoon, posting it to r/pennystocks and retweeting the details:

This also appears to have moved the stock, as we see another $500k invested in about 30 minutes after the post, and the price climbing to +22% on the day.

Monday, July 27 - Leaks, Price and Notional Volume of KODK

Compared with the next couple days, Monday's activity is pretty much invisible. While the $4 million traded on Monday is a lot for KODK, the next day we see $2 billion flood into the company ahead of the official announcement at the end of day.

$2 Billion Trades Before the Official Announcement

Following the announcement that the government would provide Kodak with a $765M loan to manufacture drug ingredients, at Wednesday's open KODK was up almost 900% on the week.

Robinhood account data shows retail interest rising on Tuesday, although Robinhood accounts for a small portion of overall trading activity. About 20,000 Robinhood accounts added KODK on Tuesday, while the stock was traded 867,308 times according to market-wide data reported by IEX, with more than 10,000 trades per minute during peak activity. Big thanks to Robintrack for sharing access to their data.

KODK Price and Robinhood Account Holdings

With a flood of buyers chasing the stock, and sell-side liquidity drying up, the price briefly climbed above $50 before pulling back. KODK shares ended the week at $21.85, which is near where it opened on Wednesday after the official announcement, but about ten times higher than Monday's open at $2.15.