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Technology Stocks : TTRE (TTR Incorporated) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sir Auric Goldfinger who wrote (587)	2/14/2004 8:21:56 PM
From: afrayem onigwecher	Respond to of 609

Follow-Up: Pumping Iron SHORT-SELLERS, the vultures and jackals of stock investing, have had their own entrails torn out for a change, a result of the powerful bull market of the past year. Celebrated hedge fund Rocker Partners, for example, lost an epic 35.6% in 2003 and that was after giving weight to a 40% long position in stocks that performed well. The average short-selling fund tracked by industry scorekeeper Managed Accounts Reports dropped nearly 27%. The reasons for the short-seller debacle are several. Nearly every sector of the stock market seemed to participate in the surge last year and during the first month and a half of this year. In other words, there was nowhere to hide. Exposure on the short side proved lethal, regardless of the sector or name selected. Likewise some of the best-performing stocks were those with funky accounting, poor fundamentals and lousy earnings prospects. The stock market seemed to honor the biblical dictum that the last shall be first. Chanos says 2003 was "horrible." This aberrant behavior occurred in part because so much money had coursed into hedge funds after the 2000-2002 bear market. Likewise, the number of hedge funds has nearly doubled in the last five years. And hedge-fund managers have tended to target the same short-selling targets, creating an imbalance in exposure. Resourceful longs were frequently able to set off buying panics among the shorts with just modest buying and squeeze tactics. Celebrated short-seller Jim Chanos took his lumps in the past year, along with his other co-religionists. The pure short portfolios of his firm, Kynikos Associated, were torched for more than 30% last year after having three nicely profitable years. In 2000 through 2001, his funds enjoyed gains in excess of 60%. "Last year was the most horrible year I've ever experienced because of the relentlessness and breadth of the rise in stock prices month after month," he grumbled to Barron's. "There was no let-up and no escape."