To: Ken G who wrote (1053 ) 11/5/1997 11:41:00 PM From: Brad Zelnick Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 1320
Ken, do you mean to say that when I've borrowed your stock to short I've been paying you? If you have it on margin, it is available to me to borrow, so that I can short it. Once it's borrowed, it's borrowed. Hence, if you want to squeeze you can keep the shares out of your margin account, or take delivery. Then I have nothing to borrow, and cannot short. If I have already borrowed it, and you take delivery, then I have to replace it with someone else's or buy it back to cover my short. Actually the way you describe the situation is almost like what Mr. Krusos does now - He prints up more shares, awards himself options, borrows money to buy the shares covered under the options, sells the shares, pays off the loan, and pockets the rest. So long as you don't notice that your %ownership in the company is diluted, you don't care. So long as the market doesn't notice the stock watering, the price stays the same. Every one gets rich, as you say. This is what is so fascinating about Copytele: everyone is getting rich on it - you, me, Krusos; And the company has no product. My willingness to take personal risk would be related to Copytele's behavior. They need to show a lot more technologic prowess at this time to cause me to withdraw my negative opinion. If they appear to mount a winning PR campaign, I would readily step aside, let the price rise and short more. Look at it this way - at a stock price of $18 the market cap would be one billion dollars. They have invested 1/2 million dollars in a Chinese JV. Talk about profit margin! (I promise you that every time Copytele adds a billion dollars of market cap through stock price appreciation, I will reassess my position.) Meanwhile you catch me off base with the profit margin. I used a net margin of 1% because it was an easy number. At $2500 the margin should be greater, but they won't sell any. Let's talk 10% on a $250 instrument. Numbers are the same. (Have you seen the National Semi - Cyrix specs for their $200 pentium class computer?) Far as the costs of shorting, they are related to the total dollar figure. The price of the stock has nothing to do with it. If it can be borrowed, it can be shorted. The prices are negotiable. I agree that it's a lot more fun to short in double digits, so get out and buy, buy, buy. Shorters nirvana is a stock that goes to zero.(Our double digits are the double zero.) Second best is a stock that goes nowhere. Only a fundamental business change for the better would cause you to close the position. In the Copytele case, their window of opportunity appears to have closed. Brad 00 Zelnick