Ted, not to demean SI, but there is a very active board at RagingBull for ELON, and it might be interesting to have you jump in over there with some of these recent posts. I'm not the best person to respond to each item and I think you might light a fire over there that would be interesting (and you can use Ignore key on any idiots, really just a couple, IMO). I'd be especially interested to see if you could get a response out of bigredanalyst from over there.
Personally I do not think it is at all likely that there will be legislation on the options issue, and to the extent that there is, it will likely just mean that companies using options a great deal for compensation will be given, and will take, the choice of just not taking them as an expense at all (meaning not on their taxes as they do now).
Seems like options issue is two-fold; possibility of excessive executive compensation (though last round of options were set at exercise price of around 16.35 I believe); and potential dilution of shares.
But as you said, S&P said it will be calculating its numbers with options as an expense.
Do me a favor, if you will, let me know about RB, and if you don't want to go there, I'll try to look here periodically and post things here over there for reactions. All in the interest of debate, exchange of ideas, and maybe putting all the pieces together.
Tom |
