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Strategies & Market Trends : Shorting stocks: Broken stocks - Analysis -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ocote who wrote (2187)	4/11/1999 10:58:00 PM
From: Q.	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 2506

Ocote: 1. What is the waiting period to be able to short IPO's? I don't know the rule for US brokers. If you use a Canadian broker you can short right away. I've not attempted to short IPOs either way. 2. Do you know an efficient way to scan or collect information on IPO's that would Yes. There are a couple of internet IPO data sites that tell you about all the upcoming IPOs. They also tell you who the underwriter is ... this might be useful because you can also see easily how their other recent IPOs have performed, and this might help steer you toward the IPOs least likely to perform well. I haven't tried this, but I think it's worth looking at if you are interested. Here are 3 IPO sites: ipomonitor.com ipo.com ipocentral.com Here's a site that's under construction and isn't working at this moment: financialweb.com

To: Ocote who wrote (2187)	4/12/1999 6:19:00 AM
From: Anaxagoras	Respond to of 2506

<<1. What is the waiting period to be able to short IPO's?>> I have anecdotal evidence on this collected from net buddies over the years that isn't always consistent. There's a lot of bulletin board confusion surrounding this topic and a lot of false utterances- in this it resembles the issue of shorting stocks under $5. Anyway, here is my current understanding (that might be incorrect). I used to think that it was necessary to wait 30 days before shorting a newly minted IPO, basically because that's how long it takes IPO's to become generally marginable, and once they are marginable they are borrowable, and shortable. However, I soon learned that this is basically a house rule and changes depending on the broker, verified by the fact that a few folks I know have shorted within this window. The next version of things I heard was that if you had the right broker with a good clearing house you could short an IPO after about three days, i.e. the time when settlement for stocks occurs, T + 3; this makes a degree of sense to me. However I've also then heard that this doesn't play an important role if the broker you use has other clients presently long the stock in a margin account. Here's what I feel confident about; it is permissible by the Fed (who is responsible for margin requirements) and the SEC (responsible for general regulatory oversight), and likewise the markets (NYSE, Naz) to short IPO's before the typical 30 day window expires; however the practice varies from broker to broker and you need to check with someone knowledgeable at your firm to see what their policy is. I'd love to be corrected on this stuff, and I'm sorry that my current understanding of this isn't better. <<2. Do you know an efficient way to scan or collect information on IPO's that would be appropriate?>> It depends on what you want to look for. In addition to the sites John mentioned I found that Edgar Online has a pretty nice set-up for what I like, i.e. pending pricings, filings, calendar, tracking, etc. BTW, as I recall, one nice thing about IPO central is that they let you pull up the companies a specific firm has underwritten- at one time I used to look at underwriters who had brought forth pieces of crap in order to find possible short candidates. Anaxagoras