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Technology Stocks : Lucent Technologies (LU) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jesica Dawnet who wrote (20521)	7/17/2002 3:07:22 PM
From: DiB	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 21876

>Be aware, I will verify what you tell me, so no B.S. please. Oh, my knees are shaking right now... <gg> From Yahoo: Friday June 21, 12:51 pm Eastern Time Lucent, Nortel Short Sellers Seen Hedging Convertibles NEW YORK -(Dow Jones)- When short positions for Nortel Networks Corp. increase by 197 million, or 150%, in a single month, it seems a sure sign that Wall Street expects the stock to drop. The next largest increase was 105 million shares for Lucent Technologies Inc. , for a 40% jump in short interest, to 367 million shares, between May 15 and June 14 . The company has 3.4 billion shares outstanding. Short interest in Nortel, which has 3.2 billion shares outstanding, rose to 330 million shares. Are traders predicting yet more gloom and doom for the already decimated telecom equipment stocks? Not necessarily. Arbitrage plays on recent convertible offerings are likely the triggers for the increased short interest in the two stocks, said Jeff Matthews, a trader at the hedge fund Ram Partners. Arbitrageurs often sell a stock short to lock in a gain when purchasing convertible shares. If the stock rises sharply, they can use the conversion to cover their short positions. Nortel issued a $750 million convertible stock offering at the beginning of June. Lucent's offering was in March, but traders may have waited for the June spinoff of Agere Systems Inc. to take positions, Matthews said. Still, bets against Lucent and Nortel abound. Respectively, they had the two largest short positions on the New York Stock Exchange as of June 14 . Shares of Nortel recently traded at $1.71, up 1 cent, or 0.6%, on volume of 10.7 million. Average daily volume is 26.9 million shares. Shares of Lucent recently traded at $2.34, down 8 cents, or 3.3%, on volume of 17.4 million. Average daily volume is 31 million shares.