To: Jdaasoc who wrote (38387 ) 3/18/2000 9:57:00 PM From: Zeev Hed Read Replies (3) | Respond to
John, I think Stuart sold 120 K shares to get off margin, the balance of his shares (around a million give or take) is now all in cash account, so the "new supply" is 250,000 shares (management and Stuart), but since 1 million shares or so are taken out of loanable pool, there might be a shortage of 750,000 shares, that is the point I thought Stuart was trying to make in suggesting that his broker had to "scramble" for shares. By the way, there is quite an amount of shares covered by Leap , I counted leaps covering about a million shares (due Jan 2001 and 2002), and these, mind you are in prices ranging from as low as $40 to about $110, I think that a good part of these might be short's hedges against their short position. To the extent that these are not, this is actually additional short fuel since there is not much rationale in holding leaps with such high premiums at this time, and these will be exercised, forcing the holders of the stock (those that wrote, hopefully, covered leaps) to replasce the stock taken away.
