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Biotech / Medical : VVUS: VIVUS INC. (NASDAQ) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: RT who wrote (18594)	2/9/1999 1:58:00 PM
From: VLAD	Respond to of 23519

RT, The trading of this stock over the past 5 months has been carefully orchistrated to allow the market makers to slowly cover the short positions without running up the stock price. The question is exactly how many more shares do they need to cover before they no longer have an interest in manipulating the stock price by selling/shorting whenever the stock seems to show a little strength. I received some info yesterday regarding SEC/NASD closely investigating market maker practices in the trading of Vivus stock. My source claims that it was Vivus' own urging which has initiated this latest investigation. A market maker can sell you stock they don't have (eg if Bear Sterns decides to hit any buy orders at 2 1/2 to try to break this strong support level) so long as they buy the stock within 10 trading days. This is a good example of how the NASDAQ market makers can legally manipulate a stock in order to create perceptions in their favor. Currently Bear Sterns really needs to push Vivus below 2 1/2 so that they can do some serious covering below 2 1/2 rather than having the stock roll back up over 3 and roll right over their shorting technique. The day before earnings they were shorting Vivus to prevent any move over 3. They need now to cover those shares below 3 to make any money. Vivus can easily pop to 3 now on low volume as it has in the past. This would be bad news for BS as a break in upward momentum above 3 will create some heavy losses.

To: RT who wrote (18594)	2/9/1999 2:41:00 PM
From: VLAD	Respond to of 23519

FWIW, Tonight on CNBC there will be an interesting report on Fen/Phen featuring a lady who took the drug and now has severe heart valve damage. Funny that just before that preview there was discussion about Smith-Kline's sale of subsidiaries and how they plan on using the cash for future R&D. They mentioned how a drug company can spend as much as $500M to get a new drug approved. Again maybe this will allow some sensible people to see that at Vivus' current trading price they have a market cap of only $80M and a safe and effective FDA approved product which is also expanding into rapidly developing global markets. IMO based on the facts as we know them, it is just crazy that Vivus' stock price ever dropped below $5.00 a share.