Lots of insider selling in big cap tech. stocks.
Mike, check out last week's Liquidity Trim Tabs at:
trimtabs.com
Has an interesting table showing the amount of employee options, and acquisition-related "overhang" for the "big heavies" (MSFT, CSCO,
etc.). Hang onto those Q's puts; they may be worth something. Here's what Biderman had to say:
"$7.1 Billion Insider #144 Sales Could Mean $31 Billion August
Option Sales
The most important number in the above table is the $7.1
billion of insider sales of previously unregistered, or
#144, shares during August, the most recent month data is
available from Thomson, First Call. Using data from
analyzing the largest US stocks, we recently estimated that
during 1998 all insiders exercised and sold $130 billion
worth of options and sold $30 billion of #144 shares.
Extrapolating option sales data from AOL, Microsoft and
Cisco's June 1999 10K's, our guess had been that insiders
will convert and sell $230 billion in options this year and
sell some $50 billion of #144 shares, or $280 billion total,
a huge $23 billion per month -- more cash out then the 1997
record equity mutual fund inflow of $220 billion, or $18
billion monthly. We might even be understating the more
recent urge of insiders to bail. If #144 sales equals 17% to
18% of total insider selling, $7.1 billion of #144 sales
means that insiders also sold $32 billion worth of options
during August. The total $39 billion, annualized, equals
$470 billion -- a rate obviously unsustainable, since there
just isn't any where near that much cash available. Add in
the overhang from $50 billion of stock takeovers of non
-public companies -- like Cisco's $7 billion purchase of
Cerent for 100 million shares with a one month lockup and
there's no way the big over hang stocks can keep rising year
after year."
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