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Technology Stocks : Equinox Systems (EQNX) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?


To: Ron B who wrote (552)6/24/1998 2:49:00 PM
From: Rob S.  Respond to of 765
 
First they may lower the options price for insiders to soak up cheap stock. Then, maybe, they will buy-back stock. The notion that management is looking out for investors ahead of themselves is true for about 10% of companies today and for about 1% of high-tech companies, IMO. That's why its not safe to 1] trust management to give investors the straight story until after they have informed their investment community friendlies. 2] try to "maximise stockholder value" unless they benefit themselves. Over the long term it's usually in their best interest to develop fair relations with small stockholders and get the price up and stable, but I would bet on either a lack of concern, self-interested manipulation or stupidity to keep things volatile in the meantime.

Part of managment's job is to require forecasts for sales and to tract end-user market demand and their customer's product and inventory build cycles. they need that critical information to do effective planning. If they suddendly flip their expectations and are "in the dark" about how things have changed 180%, then you have to assume that either they are incompetent or are letting the actual circumstances to be blown out of proportion to their personal advantage.

This is all background for many tech stocks. You don't even need to know or care about this sort of stuff to invest in techs. If the stock price has moved to the extreme in one direction or the other, that is all you need to be concerned about - the rest is speculation based on past experience and understanding of the greed motive. Most tech stock investors have seen this sort of dramatic "surprise" many times, even if the signs were obivious to anyone who bothered to look into it - like checking with distributors and OEMs. My own experience goes to that of knowing CPAs who said they were aware of companies that manipulated the books to magnify normal seasonal inventory and market fluctuations. Just ask about any seasoned sales manager or accounts receivables/payables clerk how many times they have been asked to push out or in deliveries, payments or receipts. You'll never prove this goes on but I have seen it personally.

Whether or not their is any personal advantage to be gained by management in EQNX moving from one extreme to the other (selling cheap optioned stock along the way), the advantage to smart investors is to buy low and sell (or sell short) high. Do what the insiders do, rape and pillage the market for your stock. To that end, now looks like a good time to buy EQNX.



To: Ron B who wrote (552)6/24/1998 3:04:00 PM
From: Dragon  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 765
 
They may be waiting for the smoke to clear. They are hopefully obtaining guidance from their investment bankers as to the best time to potentially buy back shares. They probably want to see several days of stability; it would not be great PR to buy too soon and then see the stock get hit because the original selling hasn't been exhausted.

Plus, everyone is expecting them to buy in anyway. Which means the positive effects of the buying would be somewhat muted. So maybe they figure they'd get more bang for the buck by tieing in buys with some sort of corporate announcement of new biz, or something else positive, shortly.

They've been stung (right or wrongly- almost certainly wrongly) by speculation that they drove the price down originally, or at least stood aside and let it drop to a deeply depressed level where it became a screaming buy. Now, to jump right back in on the buy side may seem just a bit too predatory, or even suspicious.

Finally, and NO OFFENSE to engineers, this would not be the first company which is strong on science and weak on sophisticated financial maneuvering. We need look no further than to the events of the past week for verification of how badly this whole thing got out of hand. So, again, hopefully they are listening very closely to their investment bankers for rational counsel..



To: Ron B who wrote (552)6/25/1998 6:55:00 PM
From: Ron B  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 765
 
Today marked the 7th consecutive down day for
EQNX. It also marked the 11th loss out of the
last 13 trading days. Now I am no expert on
TA but I've gotta believe that this stock is
due for a technical rebound of some kind...

Only problem is--- I see that the last trade
was at the low of the day and was a large
block of 17,500 shares. Looks like the selling
may not be over just yet.

Maybe after window dressing is over the institutions
will return. Small cap value funds should be interested.
BTW, I think the fund holding the largest position in
EQNX is Fidelity LOW PRICE stock fund. They sure got
"THAT" right...