tritton gets some shares, legion makes some sketchy trades

Sept 30, 2020 (BBBY $14.31)

132,957 more rsus vest for tritton 

october 01, 2020 (BBBY $18.75)

The day after Tritton's RSUs vest the stock goes up 25% on over 83 million volume. Throughout the month of October, Legion would trade this perfectly.

Lets look at the trading data from one of three of Legions funds that traded in October 2020. This first image details the buys/sells of Legion through the month of October. Immediately following is this Legion Partners LP1's trades lined up against historical data from that period.

Legion immediately short sales a bunch of $26 & $30 Calls with 2022 expirations. A short sale in this case means they do not have the shares to deliver if those calls were to go in the money. This bet exhibits a fair amount of confidence that the stock will not go over $26 or $30 before 2022. 

The fact they short sold 2022 calls at a $30 strike price should make their whole proxy fight suspect, as their whole pitch was based around returning shareholder value. This is an active bet against company growth. In addition to this, choosing to short sale these OTM leaps in such quantities also means you can likely guarantee the counterparty on the other end. 

Then your counterparty pal can ride the calls you sold him all the way up before dumping them on retail. 

Legion consistently traded each instrument perfectly. Just look at the historical data below. 

Each row has the corresponding trade from this one fund. Legion made well over $11 million in October from these trades alone.

The trades above were just one of Legion's funds that traded this pump in October.

Their other two funds traded with the same precision accuracy, and their trade details are below. 

Seems they knew the exact range, and traded this perfectly. They dumped their Deep ITM calls near the top, bought puts to ride it down, sold calls when the price was elevated with various expirations, etc. 

On Oct 28th, they finishes it all off by selling a bunch of December calls at a $23 strike. After this run, the stock only gets close to $23 around Nov 25th , at which point the volume spikes heavily and the price is suppressed. 

Why does this feel a whole lot like fraud?

Why does it seem like there's collusion here? 

Again, why would Legion bet against the company all the way out to 2022?