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To: White Shoes who wrote (25985)	11/23/1997 5:51:00 PM
From: Bill Fischofer	Respond to of 33268

You misunderstand my point While it is true that fundamentals ultimately rule, if a company needs money astute shorting can force a stock down, thus ultimately compelling a company to dillute and provide the liquidity for one to cover at a profit. This technique has been used successfully on many companies. The greed factor obtains when deciding when to take profits. If one has substantial profits on either the short or long side of an issue, when does one decide to take them? For many it boils down to greed. The time of year helps to influence that too. Folks tend to take losses and defer gains towards the end of the year to avoid taxes for another year. The short logic is easy to understand: solid profits on paper with the prospect of additional tax-loss selling in December by bruised longs to help keep things down until January, thus pushing taxes on the gains off for another year (or at least another quarter for those filing estimates). But I do agree with your point that folks should not be focussed on short positions, squeeze prospects, etc. in their investing decisions. The question was an assessment of relative risks of the short and long positions at this point. If you are long the stock you know how much you can possibly lose. If you are short, you think you know.