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Technology Stocks : Zitel-ZITL What's Happening -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bill Wexler who wrote (14718)	3/20/1998 7:52:00 AM
From: Graeme Smith	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 18263

Put my heuristic estimate in at 3.9 million, including one of charges (restructuring etc). Actually, I have no idea. But if I win I'll make up some speach as do how I did hours of in depth analsis to come up with the number. I bit like real analysts sometimes :-) The hypsters on the Yahoo thread are starting to get even more persistant. They've finally cottoned onto the multiple identity thing, and over the last 2 days have quadrupeled their number of aliases. By the manner of the posts I think there are only 2 different personalities posting. I'm still not entirely sure what they are attempting. They have bought a lot of shares between 11 and 16. Also I believe call options open interest is very high. For April as well as March. What are they up to : 1) Buying the stock, hoping to start a momentum/ short squeeze, which they could profit from through the options. If this is the case they may have made a mistake because it looks like Zitel could close close around 15 today without a lot of extra money to prop it up. This leaves the majority of March options worthless. Also April options look extremely risky since Zitel does not presently have the fundamentals to close above 10 around earnings time. 2) Buying stock and options, hoping to make money by hyping the stock. Again this would seem to have been unsuccessful as the only thing that has pushed the price up has been big influxes of money. Otherwise it has drifted downward, suggesting that most small investors etc. have been selling, not buying. 3) Waiting for an actual announcement, such as a merger etc. They would then dump the stocks and options before the books of MD were made public and the stock becomes worthless. On one hand a merger between MD and Zitel does not seem impossible as Zitel has to do something desparately to remain solvent. However all the merge, separate Zitel and merge, sell off Y2K division etc. possibilities I can think of seem logistically unlikely. The third possiblity, Zitel selling their Y2K division to MD seems the only realistic possibility. However this would not be the "exciting" news needed to sustain a dump. 4) Cayman islanders previously shorted. They exercised their options on Zitel just after last results. The big trades were them covering their shorts. This does not explain the options, and also leaves them at risk as they now have to try and sell their new holdings of Zitel stock. PS. Does anyone know of a site where I can find out Open Interest in options. I used to have one bookmarked, but I've lost it. At the moment all I can see is daily volume.

To: Bill Wexler who wrote (14718)	3/20/1998 7:59:00 AM
From: Graeme Smith	Respond to of 18263

Please anyone who has any ideas give me an indication. I have slowly rebuilt my short position, but still have some funds available, earmarked for Zitel. I don't want to spend that money yet, as their may be one final big push that will give me the best time to short.

To: Bill Wexler who wrote (14718)	3/20/1998 7:50:00 PM
From: Dave Mansfield	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 18263

>>Let's try to come up with the next Jackism!!<< How about this, "We're talking to some potentially large customers."

To: Bill Wexler who wrote (14718)	3/21/1998 1:16:00 PM
From: Rajiv	Respond to of 18263

I will not be surprised if ZITL goes for another convertible and uses the proceeds to buy some small internet-related companies. After all that is a hot field and will help bring in some suckers. A year back, Jack made a comment that they are getting into data-warehousing business which is supposedly larger than y2k (that is greater than 600 billion, for the longs). Instead of getting into data-warehousing, they are even being forced to get out of a losing storage division. They are also capable of repositioning their offshore divisions as the "best of breed" for the Euro conversion. Regards, Rajiv