and I came here, and gave you the easiest no brainer trade that ever was for two bucks. You 'll say, 'well the market was up." True. But when you win a decision like that with all those shorts, you are going higher. In at 15.24, out at 17.33. Waiting to reenter. I know no more than any of you. EDGE is the ax. They were in for size (for OSTK 3300 is size) on the bid. So this was a cover. Now, that being said, let's give the sociopaths of the world equal time: Monday, October 13, 2008 When Will Patrick Byrne Stop Lying? And when will the media call him on his lies? Overstock.com's wack-a-doo CEO Patrick Byrne has been telling every journalist naive enough to swallow his hokum that he "predicted" the current economic calamity. His latest blatherings came today on CNN. There was this exchange: .....How did you know the train was coming? BYRNE: Well, boy, you do your homework. Yes, if you go on YouTube and YouTube my name, you'll see all these videos where I've been saying that. Basically, every drinking binge I've ever seen ends in a hangover. Well, every expansion, every boom that's fueled by cheap credit ends in a collapse like this. So it's been sort of four or five years, it's been pretty clear this is coming, coupled with there's rampant stock manipulation on Wall Street that's just made the system more brittle. Byrne, of course, has not uttered a word about "cheap credit," subprime mortgages or Fannie or Freddie or any other actual factor in the recent unpleasantness. Indeed, Byrne's fellow naked shorting conspiracy theorists, notably blogger Phil Saunders, mercilessly pumped NovaStar Financial -- a leading subprime lender -- claimed that it was a victim of naked shorting and not its own profligate lending, and attacked critics of that company. They'd continued to do so has it slid toward bankruptcy. with Saunders flailing away on a website he created, nfi-info.net. As a commenter points out, Byrne once touted that doomed subprime lender as an "awesome firm." Instead, Byrne's blatherings over the years have been incoherent rants about "Sith Lords," "hedge fund conspiracies" (notwithstanding his own background in the hedge fund biz), and "counterfeit stock," and there is of course not a shred of evidence that any such things caused the market calamity. His 2005 contention that a "Sith Lord" -- a mastermind from the 1980s -- was conspiring against good CEOs like him has turned out to be a figment of the imagination of a very truth-challenged corporate exec. His main preoccupation, of course, has been attacking people who dare to criticize him or say nice things about people he doesn't like, most recently in a vulgar, homophobic tirade. In fact, the CNN interviewer apparently wasn't listening very carefully, because she let a nutty Byrne attack on Joe Nocera of the New York Times pass without comment. If CNN was a bit more wide awake, it would have realized there was something not quite right about the person it was interviewing and cut him off right there. So I guess the question is, when will Patrick Byrne stop misrepresenting his past statements? When will he stop lying? The answer, of course, is "never," so I guess the next question is, will the supply of naive journalists giving a podium to this snake oil salesman ever end? © 2008 Gary Weiss. All rights reserved.
Now that OSTK has been vindicated, earnings will improve? It is not uncommon for business owners to forget what business they are in. Happens all the time. Imagine setting up a booth at a flea market and every customer that stops by, you start talking about drinking.
Earnings have nothing to do with anything. Unless he says he's throwing money out his office window, who cares? He said on TV yesterday his growth rate is haved because of the economy. so what? If he does pop a profit. he only goes higher. But I bet this settle ment puts them on easy street. Doesn't he have to file an 8k? This is a squeeze play, accentuated by the settlement. That simple. There was a big cover at the open today,a nd they'll be more. Think MS wants to keep playing games? They'll be buying these guys in for quite a while. But you do what you want. I'm long again in the 15's.
Now, let's play a little game. OSTK kills them, Zac Bissonette comes out, Zack's comes out, and this lying bastard Gary Weiss, who's probably cost more of you guys money than you'll ever know. Weiss says Byrne said nothing about Credit crisis, or anything like that. Here you go. Now, who's lying? <object id='ovideoBadge' align='middle' width='400' height='340' codebase='http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=9,0,0,0'><param name='allowScriptAccess' value='always' /><param name='allowFullScreen' value='false' /><param name='movie' value='http://video.overstock.com/ovideoBadge.swf?p=753&serverURL=video.overstock.com' /><param name='quality' value='high' /><param name='bgcolor' value='#eeeeee' /><embed src='http://video.overstock.com/ovideoBadge.swf?p=753&serverURL=video.overstock.com' quality='high' bgcolor='#eeeeee' width='400' height='340' name='ovideoBadge' align='middle' allowScriptAccess='always' allowFullScreen='false' type='application/x-shockwave-flash' pluginspage='http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer' /></object> It's just all part of their game. Their game that's now over. Stock777 can tell you. These guys have cost every honest guy on this board money. Think about all the times you were tracing, and Herb Greenberg, or any Street.com guy or Barry Minkow, or Sam Antar, or Roddy Boyd or Bethany McClean or Carol Remond or a dozen others bashed your position. You think that was random? How many times did you go long a heavily shorted stock, and you saw it just blow through really solid support like nothing?You were scammed, and they still do it. Until the arrests come, they'll still do it.
Too bad you failed at that too. Seriously, not to wish any serious harm on anyone, but in your case, suicide would actually improve matters for you.
Profits have everything to do with a business traded on an exchange. Are the shareholders there to help the CEO get rich? This is my problem with all who blame the Short sellers. Profits are insurance against short sellers. Book value and break apart value block shorts. If lehman and AIG had been shorted into oblivion sooner - our tax payers would be in better shape.
Had the shorts been more powerful - these wall street banks would have been taken down sooner or have never had taken the chances they took. --------------- That is a very interesting conclusion. There was no shortage of people who were aware of the mortgage problem but the shorts didn't bring down the banks nor were able to publicy "discover" like Enron or others. This makes one wonder who are the powerful shorts. It was none other then themselves. Hmmnnn..
How many times did you go long a heavily shorted stock, ========================= In my travels, I haven't run across anyone who used high short interest as a metric not to buy a stock, in spite of the fact that studies show they offer poor returns.
I did rewrite that quote while you were drafting yours. But it still makes sense. It is very risky to short a rigged market.
http://www.marketsmediaonline.com/news_details.htm?wP=1&wPI=1&cN=1999 CEO Rallies Against Prime Brokers By James Armstrong, Hedge Fund Correspondent Patrick Byrne, the chief executive officer of Overstock.com, says his company is pressing on with a lawsuit against big banks for their role in naked short selling, banks that are now seeking protection from the very naked shorts the company has criticized. Overstock has sued a range of financial institutions, from Bank of America to UBS, for allowing their prime brokerages to aid hedge funds and other investors in making naked shorts. Naked shorts occur when investors sell shares of stock they do not own without arranging to borrow them first. When investors fail to deliver the stocks, the trades are voided, but usually not before the stock's share price is driven down by excessive selling. In the past, big investment banks have minimized the effects of naked short selling. Though failure-to-deliver notices were more common for some stocks than others, that was not proof, they argued, of a malicious short attack. It simply might mean a number of people were trying to short the stock of a company because its fundamentals were unsound. That, however, was before big firms like Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers started getting downward pressure from shorts, some of them possibly naked shorts. In July, the Securities and Exchange Commission passed an emergency order aimed at stopping the naked shorting of 19 large financial firms. Byrne points out that every single prime broker defendant in the company's lawsuit was on that list of protected firms. "They're basically demanding protection from a crime that three years ago they denied existed," Byrne told Markets Media. "I can't tell you how anxious I am to get them into court." Byrne compares the SEC's emergency order to a caste system, protecting large firms but not small ones. What is worse, he argues, it protects the very market players who enable naked shorts to occur. "Definitely, it's got to apply to everyone," Byrne said. "We can't have an apartheid regulatory system." The SEC followed up the July order with other emergency actions that expanded the number of protected firms and provided new settlement requirements. Byrne said the provisions of the original order would be sufficient to put a stop to naked shorting provided they were made permanent and were applied to everyone. Such a measure would solve the problem overnight, he argued. As the market has tanked in recent weeks, critics of short sellers, once relegated to the fringe, have been taken more seriously. Byrne, though, makes a distinction between legitimate short selling, which can be healthy for the market by providing liquidity and preventing overvaluation, and naked shorts. "A sea lion isn't a type of lion," Byrne said. "Naked short selling isn't a type of short selling." After years of downplaying naked shorts, banks have come around to that t of view as well, which Byrne believes could be good news for Overstock's case as it brings action against those very banks for their own role in enabling the problem. Posted on Oct. 15, 2008