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Strategies & Market Trends : Roger's 1998 Short Picks -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: nimingdn who wrote (14962)	10/31/1998 9:21:00 AM
From: RockyBalboa	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 18691

Shorting now consists of some ingredients. One is the strong belief that a short-lived rally in a money-losing company is overdone and recent gains should be reverted quickly. The herd might be buying, but now they buy from MMs and Co's which sell stock they acquired for fractions of the present price. Additionally, short covering is to happen strictly at the ask, if you don't want to sit around and wait for a few pieces to come in. The other one is: you really need a big stomach. If a short co runs against and if you are convinced, short more, there is no use of reverting a short story into a long one. But never short in a dull market. As for BioTime which had a recent runup to 12 bucks, they give in buck for buck and retested the $8 area yesterday. Intermediate Target: $5.5 again as nothing, really nothing changed in BTIMs fundamentals. BTIM fell into agony mid July when it approached $6. But nothing happened then. No more pieces came out at that price, but there were no buyers for a long time. It practically bottomed out only to double till now but gave in 50% of its recent gain again. Though, I do not see a GT zero happening in the next half year. What is astonishing: No one ever reported troubles in borrowing BTIM, though it is one of the most heavily shorted stocks. Eventually BTIM lost some 8% on Friday. Macrochem emerged from penniland along with some well-timed stock buybacks. They said to retire up to $1M, which spelled trouble for former short sellers. The price climbed $3 since. As MCHM is not that cash-rich, they might resell some of that stock. Target $3. MCHM did not cross 8 so I shorted just beyond it only to see how weak the bid is - in fact. FIBR is a company which drew some attention recently undergoing a restructuring by dividing itself into 2 or 3 likes, along with a recapitalisation rights offering, like UGLY/Cygnet (Cygnet never happened). What it indeed has are some outstanding preferred notes making life not easy for common shareholders. Target: $3, lowered from $6. From those one with more meat: TNSI Transaction: I sat on the sidelines as it was ever- rising from 18 to over 30 in an otherwise weak market. Suddenly news went out that there are takeover talks to aquire TNSI at 35 by GTECH. This and only this was the signal to enter a short immediately. Recently, a TNSI takeover was ruled out sending the stock lower. Recent short occasions: SCOC at 5 5/8 SNIC at the very first runup to 7. Even the toughest SNIC riders confirmed and sold into the hype which is made of "old stories" they say. The story was good enuff for an immediate 200% jump at the opening, though. Target for SCOC $3, SNIC $1. C. --------------------------- PS and glossary: It is and never will be in my opinion to discredit Dreyfus a a whole company. Dreyfus runs a well functioning brokerage as well as weighted and good performing funds, in common. -)Fact is that Dreyfus, a honorable investment firm, had run 2 aggressive small cap funds which were responsible for some unsustainable sharp run-up in a bunch of crappy smallcaps. Consequently and in time with the sacking of the fund manager the "fallout" of it was a hefty selling in parts of that small caps either by short sellers or the fund. For a certain time though, Dreyfus refused commenting the funds managers activity and subsequent sacking and replacing him with a more astute female of whom I never heard of but her target was to stabilize things with the funds. -)Auric Goldfinger runs, amongst other activities, a separate thread on SI. His contributions are not only important for short selling activities but prevent declared longs from buying some phony stocks into a "value" long portfolio. Therefore, the "cleanup" factor of him and declared short sellers must never be undervalued. As for myself, reading the real fishy stocks like all of the Y2K stocks definitely prevented me from buying into disasters like TAVA later, saving me a certain amount of money.