I just got off the phone with Fred R.
and asked him what I thought was a basic
question on how shareholders can gauge the
marketing success of Ashtons new system.
I made the false assumption that they
would be naming names, and those press
releases would bring new shareholders to
this stock. Unfortunautly, that won't
be the case. Fred R made it clear to me
that they never intended to name names
all along. The only way we can know
how successful ASTN has been is to see
the VWAP component of trading on the
Phily exchange, of the stocks like GE
that ASTN will be handling. So for example
if GE normally trades 10,000 shares in
Philly, and it starts trading 25,000 after
ASTN goes online, then you may find that
additional 15,000 shares are from ASTN.
Fred was understandably under a lot of
pressure today, with deadlines and stock
price down, so when I tried to press him
as to how a shareholder could follow the
VWAP portion of ASTN traded issues on the
Philly exchange each day, I got no further
than "ask your broker". Since I won't be
able to determine ASTN's marketing success
without this information, maybe longs here
can focus on what technique Level-2 people,
or with other tools or contacts at the
Philly exchange, can be used to determine
more precisely the volume of trading that
ASTN is contributing on a daily this summer.
I'm assume ASTN will let us know in press
releases or from it's web site of only
the volume numbers they are handling, but
I obviously would like to see the early
volume numbers daily, then wait for ASTN
to tell me about it.
If it's any comfort to longs, I only got
Fred on the line as the normal women could
not answer, and Fred didnt sound like a guy
hiding anything, just too busy to deal with
the pressure he must be feeling right now.
He did repeat that they are on track to sign
up nearly 100 major financial institutions
into using their service by year end. At
this late a date, they must be getting some
feel for the markets acceptance to their
system, and since he didn't scale back that
projected figure, I feel some comfort here.
He also stressed the "bigness" of the type
of clients when I mentioned ITG's Posit that
handle much smaller trades than ASTN 5,000
share minimum. This came up when I pushed
him on how will we know the strength of the
100 clients they are trying to sign up; and
by the minimum share block available, one
could surmise they would have to all be big
volume handlers to use Ashton.
I just bought some more at $7-3/4 after
I halved my position back in the $14's,
which seemed prudent at that time since
I have been in this stock from the $7's. |
