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Non-Tech : Knight/Trimark Group, Inc. -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Dalin who wrote (3428)	8/11/1999 8:32:00 PM
From: Sir Francis Drake	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 10027

No, Dalin, Joseph, I can't find that info anywhere else in any news release etc. - but that is no excuse. As to 1 million shares not making any difference - it may not make any difference if you look at it from the perspective of the size of the float etc. But that is not how things work. The point is, it is a THREAT against shorts - they cannot be sure that at any given moment, NITE might not unleash a big buyback wave, perhaps coupled with some positive PR for maximum effect. One million shares, concentrated at one appropriate moment, can spiral prices badly enough to spark a short squeeze. Obviously bought in small amounts over many days, it is meaningless, but employed properly... Further, there is a psychological component to it - the very fact that such a program exists prevents the sell off from reaching ridiculous levels. I for one, suspect that well informed shorts (FBCO comes to mind) knew about this cancellation - and that means there is open season to sell this thing as low as the day is long. I am convinced that had the program been in place, you would not see NITE under 30 at any time. How do I know? Because as a trader, I regularly played NITE both long and short. And I can tell you, that as we approached 30, I was extremely careful about shorting in any quantity - and in fact I was expecting NITE to snap back when it touched 30, I wasn't about to push my luck. In fact the day before, I wrote a post to the effect that if NITE was going to let the buyback program kick in, the logical place to do it, would be to defend the 30 mark, in view of the tremendous damage to investor confidence that would be done if we broke $30 (just look at the chart). So, the buyback program was definitely in my mind - a well orchestrated short squeeze at the 30 level (plus a PR release - is how I thought of it) could have been very nasty for shorts. Of course, I was a fool, because the program was dead by then. I can tell you one thing - HAD I KNOWN about this, it would have definitely influenced my behavior. I would have been far more bold about shorting NITE in bigger quantities at lower price levels. In fact had they cancelled their program earlier, and I had known about it, I would not have established a long investment position. When I wrote "short every technical bounce" back some weeks ago, I did it based on many factors, but even I didn't know just how correct that strategy was. But "woulda" "shouda" "coulda" - I make no excuses - I blundered badly; I did not do enough DD to ferret out this thing. But not all is lost, I will continue trading NITE, and I will not forget this come the next downturn... maybe it does make sense for the insiders to grab all the money they can now, because there will be no mercy. Morgan