ML, seems to be a positive correlation between the stock's risk...

ML, seems to be a positive correlation between the stock's risk and the amount of HC chatter, particularly the small talk. Likely due to need for social confirmation among traders when uncertainty is high.

APA, ENV, SYD, TCL, and a few others are quite predictable, so usually not much to chatter about. Also, they tend to have instos dominating, and instos don't do HC. But the APA-ENV tie-up is interesting.

I started buying APA during latter 2013 (should have bought years ago!). My buying switched to ENV when the acquisition was announced because of the 4-5% spread (1-2% sp difference until now plus the extra 3% dividend). Some risk that the deal will fall through (would be mainly if APA can't get ENV's low loan rates continued). But I think the deal will occur because lenders risk squeezing APA for higher loan rates and APA already knows ENV inside out (it runs most of ENV's operations and is its largest shareholder).

But yes, if the deal fails, ENV may fall 10%.