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To: hdl who wrote (119359)	3/5/2001 3:13:55 PM
From: manalagi	Respond to of 164684

hdl: I learned shorting could be dangerous the hard way from barron as well. I shorted AOL when William Hammond touted as the best single idea. Barron was negative on AOL because of its creative accounting of alliances with other companies, i.e. accounting fees of several years into one quarter (immediate recognition as revenues) which spiked the net income tremendously. That made AOL performance looked so good in one quarter. The next quarter the SEC look into that fuzzy accounting, so AOL had to spread out the fees over as many quarters as it has that contract. AOL restated the previous quarter by making it lower, and then next current quarter looked awesome compared to the restated preceding quarter. AOL share price spiked up again. And William was euphoric again. The end result was I did not cover the short fast enough or hedge it with derivatives or buy stop. AOL stock price jumped up dramatically in a few days. That was an expensive tuition which I would not forget. Henceforth, I was very careful in shorting and had not lost any money shorting since. Good luck to you.