I don't think you can be taught stock trading in an HN reply; when someone speaks in an interesting but undecipherable jargon, it's best to make a mental TODO n

I don't think you can be taught stock trading in an HN reply; when someone speaks in an interesting but undecipherable jargon, it's best to make a mental TODO note of it and do your own independent research. In a nutshell, what he means is that news of the acquisition was leaked to the public, which explains the huge interest in the 3COM stock; it saw unusual uptick in the traders' interest in it, meaning there was information those traders were privy to. If you know someone was going to buy a company for an X amount of dollars per share, and you had the opportunity to purchase those very shares before the acquisition for X-Y dollars. If you bought N shares, you would be making N*Y dollars in profit, with in a few days (until the sale is final.) Not bad.