Selling Into Strength

You want to sell the 8 million shares you've owned since $17. The stock is now at $83. Your ownership of the stock is big: there are only 70 million shares outstanding, and only about 5 million trade a day on average. So when you sell, if you just offer 8 million shares for sale, the stock's gonna drop. Like...fast. Maybe it kisses $80 on the first bid...or worse. So you'd be selling against yourself, more or less; as you sell more, you'll drive it down further. You really want to not sell more than 10 or 20 percent of the day's total volume, or you'll move the market against ya.

And yes, it's hard enough to make money in the markets without stacking the deck contra.