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Strategies & Market Trends : Ask Vendit Off-Topic Questions -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Vendit™ who wrote (3681)	1/10/2005 9:13:13 AM
From: Walkingshadow	Respond to of 8752

Things are looking grim for TASR. Might be a good short, if it weren't for all those shares already held short. That makes it a risky short in my book. Still.... insider selling is a nice thing to see in a potential short. Saw this on the news, appeared in the WSJ this morning: The WSJ's "Tracking the Numbers" column discusses Taser, which stock plummeted almost 18% Friday after it said the SEC was looking into a big, late Dec sale as well as concerns about the safety of the weapons. Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard also met with Taser executives last week to get information on safety issues. Then on Saturday, a man in Florida died after a struggle with police that included being shot with a Taser stun gun. Another bearish sign: Taser executives and directors have sold significant portions of their holdings since Sept. Shortly after the co claimed that a Pentagon study affirmed its products' safety, insiders sold nearly $67 mln in Taser shares in a single week. Rob Miceli, an analyst at Gradient Analytics, calculated that insiders sold 83% of their option holdings in Nov, and on avg recently shed more than 61% of their beneficial holdings. In addition, the new element of concern highlighted by the SEC's inquiry, however, is potential financial misrepresentation. On Dec. 20, Taser announced a $1.5 mln order, including 1K units of its new, mass-market consumer stun gun to Davidson's. The deal was the first big sale of the consumer version. Mr. Miceli has expressed concern about the deal's timing, just before the end of the quarter. The announcement of the SEC inquiry sparked rumors that Taser was "channel stuffing," or packing sales into a period so that its results would look better. Mr. Miceli said that sales growth was slowing sharply in sequential quarters last year. T