On July 5, I logged into my trading account at LowTrades to check on the per share price of a single stock - Hemispherx Biopharma (AMEX:HEB). On the Google Finance discussion boards, everyone is abuzz with excitement as stock quoting platforms across the internet return quotes of $29.84 per share for Hemispherx, up from Thursday evening's close of $2.54 per share.

Yep. There it was! Hemispherix Biopharma had somehow grown during non-trading hours from $2.54 per share to $29.84 per share!

Then it hit me. Very little in my LowTrades.com portfolio was priced even close to what it was priced at when the closing bell rang at the end of Thursday. In addition to the curious change in Hemispherx Biopharma's stock price, here's what my portfolio reflects:

• CIT Group, Inc. (NYSE:CIT) rose from $1.99 per share to $26.37 per share.
• ConocoPhillips (NYSE:COP) dropped from $40.96 per share down to $29.84 per share.
• MGM Mirage (NYSE:MGM) rose from $5.92 per share to $25.09 per share.
• Playboy Enterprises, Inc. (NYSE:PLA.A) rose from $3.48 per share to $29.79 per share.
• Regions Financial (NYSE:RF) rose from $3.75 per share to $29.96 per share.

The unexplained changes in price for these stocks, and many others, is clearly not due to any type of error with the LowTrades.com trading platform. These prices are actually being reported by many different trading and quoting sites on the internet, including BioSpace, Action News 6, IntoMobile, PilotOnline, and many others.

Unless someone knows something about these and hundreds of other stock that the rest of the investing world isn't privy to know, I'm gonna quickly deduce that the per share prices of stocks being returned by quoting sites at the current time is erroneous. A fair word of warning: For the investor with a day job, don't call your boss up this Independence Day weekend and colorfully declare your independence from him just yet.

07/6/2009 UPDATE: It appears that the glitch may have been fixed prior to the opening bell this morning.

Tags: Heb Cit Cop Mgm Pla.a Rf

Bookmark: