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Non-Tech : Bill Wexler's Trading Cabana -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Rono who wrote (445)	11/30/2004 4:44:26 PM
From: Bill Wexler	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 6370

When I was looking at "post-asbestos" plays such as USG and W.R. Grace, I also ran across OWENQ. Unfortunately, the owens agreement specifies that the current shareholders will receive nothing...so I didn't bite. I'm kicking myself now because I could've picked it up under 50 cents a share. :( My guess is that speculators may be tossing it around on rumors that the current agreement with existing creditors will be thrown out. This is understandable in light of the fact that Bush is in for a second term and Daschle is out. Prior to that, I was speculating on what I considered to be a safer play -- USG. It went to 20 before the election - and popped up another 12 points after the election! I think that a much more interesting and conservative play on Owens might be to wait and see if the current stock gets cancelled and pick up some of the new equity issued when it emerges from bankruptcy. A classic "Mr. Pink" type play...assuming the numbers look OK. Time will tell.

To: Rono who wrote (445)	12/1/2004 1:50:25 PM
From: Kevin Podsiadlik	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 6370

I remember much the same thing happening in Iridium a while back during its death throes. Best I can tell, it works like this. OWENQ is known going to zero, but it's not trading particularly near zero (because of the irrational optimism of some shareholders), so the shorts pile on. But the stock is so heavily shorted, borrows can't be found for all the shorts, so they get bought back in. As a result, the price goes up, which begets more shorting, more failed borrows, more buy-ins, etc. etc. And so on and so on until the price finally reaches a level where some of the more alert OWENQ shareholders finally sit up and take notice that they're being offered as much as $5 (or whatever) for their nominally worthless shares, and that they'd better take it while they can. That may be what finally kicked in this morning. Kind of sucks for the shorts who get bought in at those ridiculous levels, but those are the hazards.