Shares in struggling UK-listed online gambling operator Bwin.party digital entertainment have recovered some of the ground they lost on Friday after rumors circulated that Canada’s Amaya Gaming may still be pursuing acquisition talks.

In November, Bwin.party confirmed it was having “preliminary discussions” with unidentified parties regarding a potential sale of the company or parts thereof. Bwin.party shares fell nearly one-fifth on Friday after rumors spread that some or all of these suitors had walked away from the negotiating table, reportedly due to the Bwin.party board’s refusal to consider proposals to sell parts of the company piecemeal.

On Tuesday, the Evening Standard claimed that Amaya was “still at the table” with Bwin.party regarding a potential acquisition. The rumors helped Bwin.party’s shares regain some of their lost ground, rising from Friday’s closing price of 83.75p to 91.15p at the end of Tuesday’s trading.

Meanwhile, Manulife Securities was at least partly the impetus behind the Quebec securities watchdog’s probe into irregular stock trading prior to Amaya’s June 2014 acquisition of PokerStars. In Decemberr, the Autorité des Marchés Financiers (AMF) paid calls on the offices of Amaya, Manulife and Canaccord Genuity looking for documents pertaining to the acquisition. Last week, The Globe And Mail reported that the Manulife investigation was focused on a “closely knit group” of a dozen brokers and their family members.

On Tuesday, the Globe reported that it was Manulife itself who alerted the AMF to the trades by the dozen brokers following an internal investigation shortly after the acquisition. The brokers in question – who account for about a quarter of the investment team at Manulife’s Dorval, Quebec branch – are said to have close family ties to Montreal’s Lebanese community.

Manulife senior executive VP Marianne Harrison told the Globe that the company’s cooperation with the AMF had begun “before the issue of the warrant and has continued throughout the investigation.” Harrison said Manulife took its regulatory obligations “very seriously” and hoped its own investigation “will assist the authorities in determining if any wrongdoing has in fact taken place.”

The AMF probe is separate from a similar investigation by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), a US-based self-regulatory body. FINRA is believed to be investigating pre-acquisition trading by around 300 investors who profited handsomely when Amaya’s shares skyrocketed following the acquisition’s official announcement. The 300 names reportedly include multiple financial institutions in Montreal and Toronto, as well as fund managers, brokers and other wealthy individuals.

With the Chinese New Year taking place on February 19th in two days, it’s a good time to review the now one-year-old Macau gaming stocks bear market and see where we stand. This bear market began on February 28, 2014 when Macau stocks topped out, incidentally three days before my very first Calvin Ayre column on March 3, 2014 entitled The China Bubble. There I introduced my money-supply-centric debt-focused macro analytical approach to trend forecasting and what I saw as an imminent Macau bear.

Concession statement: The good timing from that article was entirely a coincidence. I have no exact timing tools, nor do I believe there are any real ones out there. That and the catalysts for the year-old bear have been different from what I cited there. While money supply slowdown has certainly figured in fundamentally speaking, catalysts for the recent downturn have been Chinese government crackdowns rather than rising interest rates. So arguably, I got it wrong, even though the call was right. What it also means is that the interest-rate induced fall is still ahead of us if and when it happens, and could happen at any time.

Short price review for four Macau stocks since March:

1) Wynn Macau Ltd. (WYNMY) down 37%

2) Sands China (SCHYY) down 40%

3) MGM China Holdings (MCHVF) down 41%

4) Galaxy Entertainment Group (GXYEY) down 43%