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Strategies & Market Trends : Anthony @ Equity Investigations, Dear Anthony, -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: scion who wrote (104592)	7/24/2008 12:55:48 PM
From: scion	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 122087

Collateral Damage From the War on Shorts Thursday, July 24, 2008 garyweiss.blogspot.com CJR Online's Audit column discusses a provocative issue -- how the SEC's politically motivated campaign against short selling has hurt business journalism. The Audit, also points out that media has failed to cover a possible short squeeze in shares of the financial stocks affected by the SEC emergency order. But it's the possible effect on tough journalism that intrigued me about thsi column. The Audit's Ryan Chittum quotes an email from a journalist saying as follows: Any financial journalist committed to delving beyond the corporate handout knows that shorts can be great sources—they can provide all sorts of perspectives and information about a faltering company that you never would have thought of otherwise, and they’re an invaluable counterweight against all those unthinking analysts who just keep bleating “buy.” As long as you keep in mind that they have an ax to grind (though no more or less so than those on the other side dedicated to seeing a stock go up), and verify that their information is accurate, it’s very valuable for a journalist to talk to them. And now that source of information is going to be severely crimped, because shorts will be leery of being perceived as “spreading rumors” if they give negative information on a company to a journalist. It’s already happening; this week I tried calling a well-known short I’ve spoken to in the past, to get his thoughts about the SEC crackdown, and he wouldn’t even get on the phone with me. It's reassuring to see that the Audit is now fully repaired from the damaged caused by the pro-corporate slant of its former editor Mark Mitchell. As I've previously reported, Mitchell has found his true calling as a hatchet man for Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne. Meanwhile, SEC chairman Chris Cox continued his tawdry publicity campaign in the op-ed pages of the Wall Street Journal, while economist Ed Yardeni raised some sharp questions about his emergency order, including: why hasn't Cox reinstated the uptick rule? © 2008 Gary Weiss. All rights reserved. garyweiss.blogspot.com

To: scion who wrote (104592)	7/30/2008 8:41:05 PM
From: Jeffrey S. Mitchell	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 122087

A Short History of "Short and Distort" Note to Chairman Cox: No one in their right mind would distort first and short later, hence the proper term should be "short and distort" not vice versa. The term was coined by the late Gary Swancy aka "Ga Bard" here on SI. Here is his post unveiling it on 8/16/99 entitled "PUMP & DUMP vs SHORT & DISTORT": Message 10970340 Gary was comparing two companies, Midland (MIDL, for which he had once been paid to do IR), and Orex Gold (ORXX, where he was long). For reasons I can't really explain, Gary was convinced a guy on that thread was a market maker shorting ORXX. Not true. He was just there to point out all the red flags. Sure enough, the prime manipulator of ORXX, John Surgent, was sentenced to 14 years in prison for cheating investors out of $46M ( see: Message 22447119 ). Gary eventually came around to his senses and he and that red flag guy became pretty good friends. And who was that other guy? Me! In the words of Steve Harvey... and now you know the rest of the story. :) - Jeff