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To: Thomas Scharf who wrote (402)	10/16/1998 9:55:00 PM
From: TheRainmaker	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 2018

What do you mean by insider? Isn't this info made public?

To: Thomas Scharf who wrote (402)	10/17/1998 1:16:00 AM
From: corporal spewchunks	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 2018

How about this for Put transactions: Someone bought 3,976 Nov. 30 puts yesterday. Not sure what this means. No insider would call that sort of attention to himself.

To: Thomas Scharf who wrote (402)	10/17/1998 11:27:00 PM
From: corporal spewchunks	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 2018

I keep thinking about that huge put transaction the night before the earnings announcement. 3,976 puts expiring in November. That's a pretty big bet that the stock is going down and soon. Would have had to be done by an institution since beyond the capabilities of most individual investors. This following a decline in price to 11 1/4 from the mid twenties and a rise back to 18. How to insure the market will go down on the news? Looks to me like a wave of sell orders hit before the market opened. Nothing like a little momentum creation, a favorite tactic of short sellers. Then an analyst's downgrade. Why downgrade from "strong buy" to "buy" when the stock is already considerably down? I can also tell you that someone from Piper Jaffrey (an assistant analyst) contacted me shortly after I posted about the German contract win and asked me what I knew about it. Then that same person recontacted me and asked me what I knew about the forthcoming earnings announcement. Just a coincidence? Maybe. Thoroughness is a virtue after all. There are several inferences that can be drawn from this but everyone will have to do that for themselves.