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Technology Stocks : Visioneer (VSNR): Does anybody know what's going on? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Benjamin Ostrom who wrote (1286)	3/10/1998 7:52:00 AM
From: Eman03	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1763

I'd be interested in the answer. I would like nothing more than to eliminate my shares from the short pool.

To: Benjamin Ostrom who wrote (1286)	3/11/1998 2:09:00 PM
From: jlib	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 1763

Schwab said they would switch all my stock to cash side. It will take 4 days (borrower has 3 days to cover). There is nothing wrong with them lending out stock in a margin account but since I get no benefit (I can't margin my VSNR holdings because the stock price is too low for Schwab's standards) there is no value for me as a long to hold VSNRin a margin account. I recommend anyone who does not actually have VSNR margined to do the same. Here is a fair use excerpt from a great FORBES article outlining the slimyness of NASDAQ: FORBES July 29, 1996 One day soon the music's going to stop By Gretchen Morgenson [...] Nasdaq is especially dangerous for short-sellers. Talk to people in stock loan departments on Wall Street, the back-office folks who must locate shares to cover short positions. If they are frank, they will tell tales of tricks used by professional investors, marketmakers and even company managements to juice a stock and massacre short-sellers. When an investor shorts a stock, he must borrow the shares from his broker. In large, widely traded stocks, this is usually a cinch. But in stocks with relatively thin floats, it can be a problem. Why? Because according to stock loan sources, mutual funds--with their massive stockholdings--are not big lenders of equities today. Bank trust departments lend securities, mutual funds generally do not. There could be several reasons for this. One, it's just not that lucrative. A fund might earn 12.5 basis points--$1.25 million on a billion-dollar stock position--lending AT&T stock to a U.S. borrower. Hardly worth the trouble. Then, too, short-selling is considered un-American in some circles. But there's a more devious explanation for this reluctance to lend stock for long periods to short-sellers: rich pickings to be made by squeezing shorts. Call in their borrowed stock, and you force them to go into the open market to cover--at whatever price the market demands. A lender of a stock holds all the cards. At any time after he has lent the stock, he can call it back in; the borrower has three days to return it. Marketmakers who carry positions overnight in the stocks they "make" have been known to pull back their stock and force buy-ins. The occasional mutual fund that lends shares temporarily does this as well. The short-seller isn't the only victim here. Squeezing the short drives up prices, creating volume and upward action that can attract momentum players. But once the squeeze is over, there's nothing to hold up the price. Moreover, eliminating short-sellers makes it easier to drive up the price of an already overvalued stock. Corporate executives of heavily shorted stocks also play this game. First they put their considerable insider holdings into their margin accounts, making them available for lending by the firm's stock loan department. Shortly after these executives make their stock available for lending, it often happens that they remove their holdings from the brokerage firm. Or they move the position into the cash account. Both actions force buy-ins. Result: more volatility, volatility that has absolutely nothing to do with fundamentals. Although no one maintains records of how many buy-ins take place on a given day, traders say they are happening much more frequently today, especially in the past year or so. One professional who has been buying and shorting stocks for 25 years had experienced one buy-in during the previous 24 years of doing business. In the past year, he's been on the receiving end of three. From where they sit, marketmakers can often see where a buy-in is taking place and rush in buy orders ahead of the squeezed short, further squeezing him. Shooting fish in a barrel. [...] Issue Date July 29, 1996 Copyright Forbes Inc. 1996 (c)