Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Non-Tech : Sotheby's (BID) Auction House -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: sanford pepper who wrote (153)	1/25/1999 9:11:00 AM
From: Geoff	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 236

This is in response to two queries on the thread: 1) E-Bay is expected to come out with earnings of .04 on Tuesday. If they miss, what will that do to BID? As BID and EBay are quite different companies, I don't see how we can jump to the conclusion that Ebay's earnings will affect BID's stock price. BID is not yet online, will offer a completely different line of auction items, and has a different business model for its online business than Ebay does. BID already has earnings, and will leverage its existing businesses to create a strong value-proposition for the online side of the biz. So I fail to see how ebay will affect BID at this point in time since their products and services are so greatly different. I may be wrong, but I don't see it here. 2) I am a bit confused by your post: did you imply that BID does not have a large short position out there? What is the basis for your info? BID had a very large short position a few months ago, back in October when the market was sold off. Rumors were spread which hoped that Ron Baron would sell-off part of his huge stake in BID, thus causing a drop in price since BID used to be quite thinly traded, only 90,000-100,000 shares a day traded hands. Instead of selling, he continued buying, thus causing the short squeeze that lifted the stock up to 25. That was in late November. Recently, BID has seen its short interest creep higher, now at 1,898,048 shares, or 4.76%. That was as of Jan 15th, so in the last few days there may have been a massive squeeze, we will see in next month's report. As for Christie's going online, that has been known for some time. I believe that Christie's made it known, at least tentatively, back in the summer that it was planning on offering an online auction environment. Best of luck, geoff