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Strategies & Market Trends : DAYTRADING Fundamentals -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: - who wrote (5542)	11/21/1999 7:29:00 AM
From: Bilow	Respond to of 18137

Hi Palo Alto Trader; Re that Harbor trading loss... The description from the article: The short position that led to Harbor's recent troubles involved roughly 100,000 shares of Broadvision, a provider of Internet software whose shares climbed to a high of $69.3125 a share from a low of $62.625 on Oct. 22, the day the position was purchased, a person familiar with the situation says. In his e-mails to traders, Mr. Sulmasy said the losses were due to a software glitch. "This specific version of the software did not have the maximum position size enabled, and the order was accepted at 4 p.m. on close of regular trading hours," according to the e-mail. On Oct. 25 and 26, the trader's 100,000 share short sale involving Broadvision was "covered," or closed, the person familiar with the situation says. In other words, the firm was forced to buy shares, which traded at a high of $66.953 during the two-day period, to repay the shares borrowed and sold at a lower price. This doesn't seem to jibe with the chart. At the close on Oct 22, BVSN was around $65 per share. They were below that most of Oct 25 and 26. In any case, the stock never got $6 below that closing price, and so the firm could not have lost $600K on 100K shares. quote.yahoo.com Maybe that trader sold just after the market closed, at prices well below the market. It is my belief that if he had done that during market hours, the trade could have been broken. The story I heard was that the trader deliberately put on the position in order to hurt the daytrading firm, presumably on his way to his own personal bankruptcy. -- Carl