Re: 9/1/00 - [TTN] Titan stock price seesaws in suit's wake
Titan stock price seesaws in suit's wake
By Dean Calbreath
STAFF WRITER
September 1, 2000
Shares in San Diego's Titan Corp. zigzagged in heavy trading yesterday, following the announcement that it intended to go after "unscrupulous short sellers" who allegedly conspired to push the stock down.
In early trading, Titan's stock -- which trades as TTN on the New York Stock Exchange -- shot up nearly 5 percent to $26. A selloff at the end of the day took it down to $24.63, closing slightly below where it began.
In the meantime, a review of Internet e-mail bolsters Titan's claim that short sellers -- who buy stock on margin with the expectation that it will go down -- were trading on foreknowledge that a negative article on the company was about to appear in the prestigious Barron's financial weekly.
On July 28, an anonymous writer with the pen name "barronsman" posted a message on a Yahoo! bulletin board, warning that "the rumor going around this week was a short on TTN had gotten a writer at Barron's to write a negative article on TTN."
Barronsman warned other investors that the article "is rumored to be in tomorrow's issue. I know a lot of herd shorts who shorted TTN on this rumor."
Barronsman was wrong; actually, he was a week ahead of time. The article hit the newsstands Aug. 5. The fact that information about the article appeared on the Web before it was even printed left editors at Barron's scratching their heads.
"We've read numerous scurrilous and false rumors about what we might be publishing, but this is the first instance I've known of that had any veracity," said assistant managing editor Randall Forsyth. "I'm frankly surprised."
The writer of the article, Barry Henderson, declined to comment, saying he makes it a policy not to speak to the media. Henderson, who is on educational leave from Barron's through May, referred all calls to his editors.
In the suit filed Wednesday, Titan charged that short sellers used the Barron's article to push its stock price down in the hope of making a short-term profit.
Copyright 2000 Union-Tribune Publishing Co.
signonsandiego.com |
