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Non-Tech : Ashton Technology (ASTN) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: LTK007 who wrote (144)	4/17/1999 9:58:00 PM
From: AJ Berger	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 4443

tell me what you think of this Ashton system description i may be over simplifying this a bit, but here's how i thing Ashton's July 1st system may work. let's say Ford motor companies pension plan wants to dump half it's CPQ holdings of say 400,000 shares. if they did it through regular brokerage channels, somebody might pick up on this activity and think to sell or short CPQ even more, giving Ford a lower price, and unintentionally hurting other CPQ shareholders; so here comes ASTN with a better solution. ASTN takes on Fords selling of CPQ as long as they agree to a median price for that day, and pay 3 cents per share on the service. Now ASTN sells about 1,000 shares about each minute of that trading day all automatically by computer using special mathematic's that try to get the best price without moving the market. By the end of the day, all of Ford's CPQ shares are sold but we don't see the transaction till the InstiNet after market. We see a 400,000 share trade at 4:15pm that afternoon at the median price of the stock, thus ending the transaction, and masking the seller and their intent (to sell or buy) from the rest of the market. Ford get's the best price for the day, CPQ shareholders have not been hurt much, and ASTN makes a cool $12k for doing little more than having a smart computer plugged into a phone line and a U.P.S. This concept sounds very cool to me, and though experimental, will catch on very quickly once a few big boys get a chance to benefit from this approach to fund holding changes, especially since many already have high overhead staff manually attempting to do the same type of thing and failing miserably when compared to Ashton's system. Hell, I'd bet even Warren Buffet is watching this one when he finally finds something to do with the $14 Billion in Cash he's trying to find a home. He could spend it all in one day, and nobody would be the wiser using Ashton's new trading technology.