Talking stocks, trading, and investing in general

[tesseract]

Originally Posted by 45elkton

why do you say that? they actually have substantial revenue + revenue growth.

much more clearly defined business model than linkedin in my opinion

i think hes saying it wont tank within the first two weeks of trading. Buying linked in at 120 a share was someones worst nightmare.

 

[45elkton]

Originally Posted by ihambrecht

i think hes saying it wont tank within the first two weeks of trading. Buying linked in at 120 a share was someones worst nightmare.

ok, makes more sense

 

[GreenFrog]

are you guys buying groupon shares?

 

[Slopho]

I think the Groupon will tank earlier in the first day then rebound and trade much higher on its opening day.

 

[tesseract]

my guess is groupon is going to do what all of the other hot ipos have done lately. By the time it is publically traded it will have risen 100% or more, people will buy on hype inflating the price further and all of the smart guys who bought the stock in the private market in the past few months will take their profits and run.

 

[javyn]

Aren't you prevented from selling for 15, 16 days or something if you are in on the IPO?

 

[norcaltransplant]

I started a small position in Total (TOT), the French integrated oil & gas company. It's selling at a discount to peers, generates decent cash, and will be switching to a respectable quarterly dividend (currently semi-annual distribution).

If things really go south, especially in Spain and Europe, I have my eyes on Telefonica (TEF) for their size and increasing South American presence.

 

[otc]

Originally Posted by javyn

Aren't you prevented from selling for 15, 16 days or something if you are in on the IPO?

I think there is a lockup on new capital raising IPO shares...I am not sure if this lockup applies to someone who currently owns shares from the existing capital stock.

I think that if you own a share now, you can probably sell it (although it probably involves some PITA procedure where you register your shares with a broker before selling them).

 

[alphaO888]

Originally Posted by otc

I think there is a lockup on new capital raising IPO shares...I am not sure if this lockup applies to someone who currently owns shares from the existing capital stock.

I think that if you own a share now, you can probably sell it (although it probably involves some PITA procedure where you register your shares with a broker before selling them).

lockup period is usually 4-6 months.

 

[javyn]

When I called my broker (Fidelity) on Yandex, they offered to get me into the IPO but said I couldn't sell for 15 or 16 days (can't remember). I said screw that and bought and sold on the market.

 

[wqvong]

Anyone know when Groupon will go IPO? and what is the stock ticker? Is it GPRN?

 

[alphaO888]

Originally Posted by javyn

When I called my broker (Fidelity) on Yandex, they offered to get me into the IPO but said I couldn't sell for 15 or 16 days (can't remember). I said screw that and bought and sold on the market.

The 4 to 6 month period I mentioned was for institutional investors (hedge funds, mutual funds). they usually get locked in because they're taking a much bigger chunk (my guess). For example YOKU has a lock in period for 6 months for most of these long holders. Will be a good short once that period ends.

 

[GreenFrog]

Can you guys clarify what shorting means? Is that when you bet that the price will go down, and if/when it does, then you make money? What if the price goes up?

 

[otc]

You are betting that the price will go down.

Basically, you borrow the shares from someone else and then sell them at the market rate. Then you have a bunch of money but you owe a guy a bunch of shares (plus some interest to make loaning the shares to you worthwhile).

If the stock drops, you can buy shares for less than you sold them for to give back to the guy and you get to keep the difference.
Of course, if you keep waiting and the stock goes up, eventually the guy is going to want his shares back and you will have to buy them back for more than you sold them for.

This is why people are often perfectly comfortable saying "such and such is overvalued and going to crash" but may not be willing to take on a large short position. If the crash doesn't happen for 3 months and it keeps slowly going up in price, you will spend a lot of money covering your short positions.

edit: I should note, this requires an active market for borrowing shares. It is not hard to short a tech darling like apple but you are going to have a lot more trouble shorting a more thinly traded stock (or one where people are less willing to lend shares) is difficult. You may be completely confident that some crappy penny stock is going to fall (especially if it just had a big run up) but it will be impossible to make that bet.

 

[GreenFrog]

Thanks for that.

So, if anyone shorted linkedin, they would have made a lot of money?