Ashland: Sell-off Comes Out of Nowhere

Eddy Elfenbein submits: On July 25, Ashland reported earnings and were decent--not amazing, but decent (20% ahead of expectations). The stock gapped up a bit. but eventually closed lower by two cents a share.

Now fast forward to this week. The 10-Q came out on Wednesday and the shares suddenly plunged 13% in two days. I'm not for or against this stock. I just find it interesting that a big sell-off comes, apparently, out of nowhere. Ashland even had to issue a press release after yesterday's close saying they "know of no company-specific issues" causing the decline.

I've gone through the 10-Q and nothing looks out of the ordinary. My guess is that some logarithm spotted some metric or ratio or whatever (no taxes?) and he told another logarithm to sell everything immediately.

ASH 1-yr chart: