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Politics : High Tolerance Plasticity -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: kodiak_bull who wrote (15847)	8/7/2002 1:37:45 AM
From: kodiak_bull	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 23153

Martha Stewart anyone? [Homeboys stage a rally today, shorters will consider this an excellent chance to reset shorts along the 200 dma, longs will consider this the 2nd coming, despite the massive distribution in each and every name. You know where I stand: it'd be so nice to short BZH at 66.] Martha Stewart mess continues. Well, as I thought, this whole thing was hardly a scheme to do insider trading. It turns out, at least as of today, that a Merril Lynch broker's assistant called Martha and said, "Better get out, the Waksals are selling." Let's put aside how the broker's assistant knew this, and return to it a few paragraphs down. Now, the laws of insider trading are somewhat complex, but you need a few things. First off, you need inside information and an insider. You had that with the FDA problems and Waksal. Then you need a duty not to disclose. You had that. Then you need an actual transfer of that information (an intentional transfer), with the intent ("scienter") to transmit. This makes the possessor of insider information a "tipper" and the recipient a "tippee." At this point, the tippee cannot buy or sell until the information is released to the public. So, the FDA/Sam Waksal information which, presumably motivated Sam's sales was not transmitted to Martha. The insider never disclosed inside information to the "tippee." What was transmitted to Martha was the information from Merrill that Waksal was selling. How did Merrill know this? Was Waksal a client of Merrill's, or did the volume of the sales indicate that only a Waksal family member was selling (unlikely), or did Merrill know that [name of Waksal's broker] was crossing all these trades, or trying to arrange them via blocks at getouttathemarket prices? Don't know, and it's probably irrelevant. Maybe Merrill was under some sort of internal rule/guideline not to disclose this stuff, but it couldn't pass on this obligation to Martha. She was not, as they say, in privity of contract with Merrill. So, Martha didn't do any illegal insider trading, at least if you believe this story so far. So what are they going to get her on? Just as I noted, her stupidity in not getting a good securities lawyer early on so that she would not 1) concoct some goofy story about having a stop-loss order and 2) make any stupid and misleading statements about what was going on and 3) lie to investigators. She never learned the real lesson of Richard Nixon: stop talking and scheming early early early when something goes wrong; get good counsel's advice and follow it; and the quickest and lightest damage will be the best damage. Quel moronesse, la Diva Domestica. MSO's stock is still bleeding, a false bottom and pitiful rally from 9 to 12, only to sink back down to 7.50 and today a convincing doji at 8.17. The fundamentals won't be clear on this pig for a while (the stock, not Martha), and the technicals say steer clear for at least a while. Kb

To: kodiak_bull who wrote (15847)	8/7/2002 11:02:01 AM
From: Jim Willie CB	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 23153

strong Swissy mainly thru EuroBonds, EuroDollar if someone could explain in nice detail what the hell the EuroDollar is, I would kiss them on the lips my take... US Treasury debt, but denominated formerly in a basket of European currencies (dmark, pound, SWfranc, Ffranc, etc) and now denominated in Euros better yet is investing in gold because the SWfranc is trending up vs dollar AND gold is trending up vs Swfranc I could provide links for each trend, but not quickly the gold rally will be mighty this decade gold miner stocks, but not XAU index (includes hedged firms) / jim