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"Everyone realized it was a joke."
There you go reading other people's minds again. I didn't see anyone laughing at it.
"...about the president being a buffoon. I hear Bush actually thinks it's funny."
Being accussed of being a buffoon, is a whole different ballpark than accussing someone selling puppies for the purpose of beastiality. Do you think Bush would think that was funny if someone accussed him of that?
I'm happy to let others read your words and decide for themselves what they think. If it's so obviously a joke as you say it is, then you shouldn't be so concerned about it.
Sara
joke? Not when they are written as if factual statements... and I certainly don't see anybody laughing at something as sick as that.
Sara
"If a company hires people
and they do things that are not legal, they are both guilty in my opinion."
Then by your logic every one of Arthur Anderson's clients is guilty. That's not how it works.
Sara
"If your attorney hasn't told you this you should get another attorney."
she's defending herself...
Sara
"Also, everything you have just said about me sara has posted about another company"
Not the same situation. The principals of that company are on trial in criminal court in Alberta for their actions. I posted links to the trial info, links to the ASC hearing info and links to news articles about it. I avoided interjecting my opinion.
Sara
"and the very worst of all. Ashton is selling biyatches on the internet to have sex with. Yes, animals, beastiality. Your company is selling little puppy prostitutes. Scroll at your own risk. You have been warned. This made me soooo ill. I think I will call the aspca now...besides the SEC and FBI ;-0"
http://messages.yahoo.com/bbs?.mm=FN&action=m&board=4687979&tid=astn&sid=4687979&...
Companies and individuals have the right under our laws to sue anyone they feel is slandering them. It is then the burden of the defendant to prove their statements are true.
Sara
LOL... actually, I like the phrase Bird of Prey coined... "Short n Distort"!
Have a great holiday!
Sara
"none of our posts can be taken as factual statements due to the tos agreements."
I disagree. Saying something is an opinion or stating that everything is an opinion does not cover you. Remember this SLAPP guideline?
"Understand that there are differences between statements of fact and statements of opinion. You may be legitimately sued for false statements of fact, but not for statements of opinion. Be careful. You will not be protected for stating, "In my opinion, Senator Squelch is a liar and a thief," unless, of course, your statement is entirely true. If your words contain an assertion of fact that is capable of being proven true or false -- i.e., that Squelch is or is not a liar and a thief -- you can be sued if it is shown that your statement is false, even though you tried to qualify the statement as "opinion.""
http://www.sirius.com/~casp/survival.html#know
"In your clearstation portfolio you gave astn a long recommendation. You also bought mroe shares last week and posted the same."
Two things about my "recommend" portfolio on CS. First, as you point out so often, my "recommend" list looks pretty sad. Second, I put ASTN on my recommend list last fall and as you see it's down 66% since then. My point being that anyone looking at my list should realize I'm not some guru to be followed and it certainly does not speak well for ASTN. The list is simply representative of those stocks I'm long in and is there for the purposes of discussion.
Yes, I bought more last week because I felt it had bottomed out... and felt that for me that it was worth the risk at that price and for the amount I aquired. Given that I bought it at .87 and it closed today at .94, I'd say, at least in the short run, I made a good choice. But I have not urged others to buy. Also, I believe I've made it clear that I feel ASTN is high risk.
Finally, back to my original statement, I never said ASTN was a "great buy" or have indicated so otherwise.
Sara
BTWITMACOWTFIOT = By the way it took me a couple of weeks to figure it out too
dahh... right in front of my nose! LOL
Have a great 4th!
Sara : )
"...there are also an equal number willing to do the deed via a Short and Distort."
I agree... it's perfectly logical that people who are willing to act in unethical ways would use any means at their disposal... it is a shame that greed is such a prime motivator for these people. Also, it seems pretty obvious to me that this is happening all over the stock boards.
Sara
"You believe astn is a great buy."
Ahh... there you go again putting words into people's mouths. You don't know what my beliefs are and I never said that ASTN is a "great buy". And further, if you notice over on Yahoo, I do not put "buy" or "strong buy" on my posts while you do put "strong sell".
But back to my point, your personal beliefs do not make for factual statements, they are opinion only.
Sara
: ) And a Happy 4th to you too! eom
Sara : )
"Sara, They don't even know what it means!"
Don't tell me, I'll get that!
"I personally believe that fred knew darn well who/what FUE was and what they could do for him and astn."
Can you prove that or is that just want you want to believe? No one can know other peoples minds or motives.
"... Too coincidental."
Again, just speculation on your part.
Sara
Are all the companies that chose Arthur Anderson guilty also?
Sara
LOL... I'm still puzzling over BTWITMACOWTFIOT... and probably won't let go until I find out what it means.
Sara : )
"But guilt by association is not always enough.
Good points Bird of Prey. Heres an interesting article which goes even farther to say the small companies were often the victims in these cases.
http://www.fortune.com/indexw.jhtml?channel=artcol.jhtml&doc_id=202138
"No one is more incensed than renowned VC Donald Valentine, who backed Yahoo and Cisco: "The new company is not the customer," he says. "The bank's customer is the institutional investor. The victim is the small company that needs money." "
Sara
from a what I believe is a latter issue
by: the_grand_poobah2000
Long-Term Sentiment: Strong Buy 07/03/01 01:03 pm
Msg: 123377 of 123412
I believe that it is not up on traders website yet.
written by: Peter Chapman
"Gaer says the system should should active by mid-July.The PHLX. however, is still awaiting approval from the Securities and Exchange Commission to trade Nasdaq stocks under the Unlisted Trading Privileges plan.A PHLX spokesperson said approval is expected in the coming weeks."
Gaer runs tradingear; the software vendor that is hooking up the PHLX.
http://messages.yahoo.com/bbs?.mm=FN&action=m&board=4687979&tid=astn&sid=4687979&...
eVWAP article
VWAPing Problem of Poor Executions: Vendor Launches New Market Beating System
Peter Chapman
A vendor from Philadelphia is betting its technology will make life easier for traders trying to beat the market.
Ashton Technology Group has begun a full-scale launch of the eVWAP component of its iMatch platform. That platform matches block orders before the opening, at the day's volume-weighted average price (VWAP).
The system, a facility of the Philadelphia Stock Exchange, will allow both buyside and sellside traders to anonymously input orders of 5,000 shares or more in 300 of the most liquid listed stocks. Use of eVWAP is intended to reduce or eliminate the possibility that, by the end of a day's trading, a trader will have, on average, executed at prices worse than the average for the market as a whole. About 45 sellside and 45 buyside desks have signed on, according to Philadelphia-based Ashton.
For sellside traders, the system, operated by Ashton unit, Universal Trading Technology Corporation (UTTC), is positioned as an alternative to the often-ineffective "time-slicing" technique traders have used for years to accommodate VWAP executions for their clients. For buyside traders, it is intended to help them match a benchmark - VWAP - against which they are increasingly evaluated.
"By using our system a trader reduces his downside risk of losing to VWAP," said Marc Gresack, president and chief operating officer of UTTC. "These broker dealers are willing to give us their agency orders because they lose to VWAP all the time."
VWAP Battle
Most traders, it seems are losing to VWAP. Cost consultants Elkins/McSherry estimated that 83 percent of all institutional trades in the second quarter of 2000 failed to beat VWAP.
Statistics like that don't sit well with pension plan sponsors, the owners of a good chunk of the country's assets under management. More and more they expect buyside traders to execute trades at no less than the average price for the day.
The current focus on trading benchmarks is reminiscent of the 1980s when indexing took hold among money managers. Many threw in the towel on their active management strategies and switched to passive indexing strategies.
The S&P 500 is a common benchmark. Data still shows most active managers fail to beat the market.
Market Proxy
For traders, VWAP is viewed as a valid market proxy. The derivative price is calculated by dividing the dollar value of all shares traded in a stock on a particular day by the number of shares traded.
Buyside traders are not crazy about VWAP. They don't like to ask their brokers for VWAP executions. And most deny they do so. Accepting VWAP implies their talents are unnecessary. They are paid to beat the market, they say, not to acquiesce to it. "We are supposed to be traders, not VWAPers," said Putnam's head trader Leo Smith.
For the sellside, using a matching system like eVWAP may not be as injurious to their egos. Getting a VWAP execution for their clients, in the conventional manner, can be laborious. Sometimes, it can also be futile. And that outcome affects the sellside's - but not the client's - bottom line.
"Half of our client base is large broker dealers," said Fred Rittereiser, Ashton's chief executive and a former chief executive of Instinet. "They see an opportunity to execute without the problems of trading tediously all day long and trying to get the VWAP on Bloomberg."
Rittereiser offers an example of a sellside trader charged with selling 100,000 shares of 10 different stocks at the VWAP for a client. "He has to catch the higher sides of the trades all day long," Rittereiser said. "Every time it spikes he must catch it. So he time slices. If he's gonna get his five cent [commission] he needs to get this number. It's a ballbuster to watch 10 stocks like this. But with eVWAP he's guaranteed the VWAP and he doesn't lose his commission. He's done. This is a wonderful thing for the traders."
Rittereiser predicts that 70 percent of eVWAP's business will come from the sellside in the future. The product is not intended to disintermediate brokers. "We will provide the weapons for the sellside," he said. "We will help them retain and enhance customer relationships."
VWAP executions are not new. Brokers have been guaranteeing clients VWAP since the early 1980s. By time slicing, or feeding pieces of the order into the market throughout the day at opportune moments, brokers, in theory, come close to executing at the day's average. But if they don't, the losses eat into the commission.
Automating VWAP
Elkins/McSherry estimates that from 10 percent to 12 percent of all trades are executed at VWAP. Most are off-set by time-slicing.
Ashton hopes to automate that process. Its eVWAP has two critical components: a rules-based matching engine and a calculation engine. The matching is similar to other "blind" institutional trading systems such as POSIT, Instinet and Lattice. Buy orders meet sell orders anonymously thereby eliminating market impact.
The major difference between systems is the price used to execute the trade. Instinet's crosses are done at the market's closing price. Crosses in POSIT create prices. VWAP is not an actual price. It is a derivative based on an entire day's trading across all markets.
Critical to the legitimacy of eVWAP is its VWAP calculation. "Our calc [calculation] is approved by the Securities and Exchange Commission," UTTC's Gresack said.
"It is superior to those of the vendors particularly when markets are fast and they don't pick up every cancel and correction," he added. "They don't scrub it the way we do."
All Trades
Gresack says eVWAP's calculation takes into account every trade on every exchange, including all re-prints and corrections.
"One of the biggest global managers in the world has adapted our calculation because they want to make sure they have the precise price," Rittereiser boasted. "They told their consultant of 18 years they no longer wanted to use their calc. They told them to adapt their [transaction cost analysis] program to Ashton's calc."
Rittereiser would not identify the institution's name by press time. (The top three global managers are Barclays, State Street and Fidelity.)
Broker dealers also calculate a daily VWAP, but it is usually based on transactions that occurred only on the primary exchanges, according to Rittereiser. That leaves out the five regional exchanges which account for about one-third of all listed trades.
Bloomberg's calculation is popular with traders and its TradeBook unit also has an electronic VWAP trading system ready to go. But TradeBook said it's not yet ready to launch it in the U.S. It did introduce an electronic VWAP service similar to Ashton's in Japan last October.
"We decided to first go into markets where traders would view a passive VWAP trade as attractive," said Sanjiv Gupta, TradeBook's director of trading research and strategy. "Japan is a market which they don't feel skillful enough to trade or else they don't have the resources to build a night desk." TradeBook's product is dubbed Visible VWAP.
Gupta says most buyside traders are reluctant to embrace a domestic VWAP trading system. They feel they must beat VWAP, not match it. "I suspect [Ashton] will face significant resistance from institutions that have quality trading desks," he noted. "A trading desk is evaluated on its ability to beat VWAP." In fact, some buyside traders are paid a performance bonus based on how well they do vis-a-vis VWAP.
Gupta is also skeptical such a mechanism will add much value to a sellside desk. "A skilled trader should be able to beat VWAP," he said. "A quality prop [proprietary] desk would take on that risk. Plus you get a double-commission to start." Commissions are higher on VWAP trades at some shops.
Not all traders agree with Gupta. Rich Bartels, who runs the electronic program desk at Jefferies and uses eVWAP, finds it both a good source of liquidity and an effective way to trade. "Even when you [time slice] mechanistically like we do it's still hard to meet or beat VWAP," he said. "It's nice to see part or all of a trade being done before the opening. It reduces the load for the day." Bartels notes liquidity is starting to build in the system.
Manual Resistance
At least one sellside trader is not enthusiastic about a computerized substitute for what his desk does manually. "No interest," said Aldo Parcesepe, head of trading at Bear Stearns. Parcesepe is not convinced Ashton will be able to accurately calculate VWAP, especially on days of great market swings.
The company has spent between $20 million and $25 million on eVWAP since 1994. Ashton recently hired Jefferies & Co. to smoke out investors for UTTC. Ideal candidates, according to Arthur Bacci, president of Ashton, are broker dealers that want to make markets in VWAP securities or vendors of other trading systems.
http://www.tradersmagazine.com/articledetail.cfm?mag_id=1&aid=791&year=2001
xxray,
At least now I don't feel so stupid about not knowing... lol
Sara : )
Muel,
You're right... I was just wanting to see more in the price run up than is really there. Without good volume it can flop right back down awfully fast.
Sara : )
gotcha on that one... how about that other one BTWETCETCETC?
Sara : )
LOL ?????
...with that note, I have to run off to work... have no idea what that one is.
Sara : )
Thanks!!!
Fine
Thanks!
Been watching over here, you guys are providing lots of good leads.
Sara : )
okay, I have to ask now... what does H/A/U mean?
Sara : )
Good morning...
Was wondering if I could get your take on a penny I've been watching for a while. It's been very volatile on low volume for months, but the last month it has had a fairly steady rise, although still on low volume. Does the low volume negate the reliability of the bullish rise in price? How much weight does volume have?
Sara
Good Morning... poor ole LINK looks a bit bearish lately, but I think the industry IBIZ and LINK are in could really pan out in the long run.
Have a great day!
Sara
eVWAP 50,000 X 2
By: stosh_5 $$$
Reply To: None Tuesday, 3 Jul 2001 at 9:54 AM EDT
Post # of 20274
50,000 x 2 confirmed
http://ragingbull.lycos.com/mboard/boards.cgi?board=ASTN&read=20273
Matt, Great quote! eom
Insiders chart interesting...
http://cbs.marketwatch.com/tools/quotes/insiders.asp?symb=ASTN&sid=16736&siteid=mktw
Sara
"Cybersmearing is the practice of using the Internet to broadly and rapidly disseminate defamatory and false statements about a chosen target. Targets can include both businesses and individuals. When the target is your business, the consequences can be particularly painful. Small startups may find a cybersmearing campaign interfering with efforts to raise private funds. Publicly-traded companies can instantly find themselves on the defensive, trying to rebut unfounded accusations made by anonymous accusers. Perhaps most threatening is the rising trend in cybersmear tactics to manipulate stock prices. Even the best efforts to inform investors of the strengths of a company can quickly be undone by the cloud of suspicion a cybersmear campaign can create overnight."
http://library.biz.findlaw.com/injurytortlaw_1_213_1.html
"Cybersmearing is the practice of using the Internet to broadly and rapidly disseminate defamatory and false statements about a chosen target. Targets can include both businesses and individuals. When the target is your business, the consequences can be particularly painful. Small startups may find a cybersmearing campaign interfering with efforts to raise private funds. Publicly-traded companies can instantly find themselves on the defensive, trying to rebut unfounded accusations made by anonymous accusers. Perhaps most threatening is the rising trend in cybersmear tactics to manipulate stock prices. Even the best efforts to inform investors of the strengths of a company can quickly be undone by the cloud of suspicion a cybersmear campaign can create overnight."
http://library.biz.findlaw.com/injurytortlaw_1_213_1.html
When buying diamonds...
http://www.msnbc.com/news/593785.asp?0dm=C17ON
Sara
eVWAP 30,000 X 2
By: stosh_5 $$$
Reply To: None Monday, 2 Jul 2001 at 9:45 AM EDT
Post # of 20252
30,000 x 2 confirmed
http://ragingbull.lycos.com/mboard/boards.cgi?board=ASTN&read=20250
Arthur J. Bacci
Arthur J. Bacci has served as President and Chief Operating Officer of Ashton since March 1999 and as a Director since September 1999. From 1998 until 2000, Mr. Bacci served as Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer of Ashton. Mr. Bacci has served as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of eMC since June 2000 and has been on eMC’s Board since February 1999. Mr. Bacci serves as a Director of Gomez Advisors and UTTC and served as their Chief Financial Officer until December 1999.
Prior to joining Ashton, Mr. Bacci was a management consultant with KPMG and Price Waterhouse, specializing in financial management strategy and enterprise performance measurement, with particular emphasis on financial institutions. Mr. Bacci successfully managed projects aimed at improving management reporting linked to clients' business strategy. From 1989 to 1995, Mr. Bacci was associated with William E. Simon and Sons and WGSP International where he was directly involved in the acquisition, oversight and ultimate sale or merger of numerous companies and assets. His responsibilities included strategic planning, business plan preparation, and implementation of financial management controls and capital raising. During this same period, Mr. Bacci served as Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of World Trade Bank and Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of Westcoast Holdings, Inc. Additionally, Mr. Bacci served on the Board of Directors of World Trade Bank, Westcoast Holdings, Inc. and SoCal Holdings, Inc.
Mr. Bacci graduated from San Jose State University with a B.S. and received his M.B.A. from the Leavy School of Business at the University of Santa Clara.
http://www.ashtontechgroup.com/aleaders/bacci.html
Jennifer L. Andrews
Jennifer L. Andrews was appointed Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of Ashton, UTTC and eMC in June 2000. Ms. Andrews also serves as treasurer of REB Securities and Croix Securities.
Prior to joining Ashton as Controller in 1999, Ms. Andrews was an audit manager in the Assurance and Advisory Business Services practice of Ernst & Young LLP, where she advised clients in the financial services industry. In this role, she was responsible for financial audits and the issuance of regulatory compliance reports for banks, investment companies, broker-dealers, and entities in various other industries. Ms. Andrews was also involved in advising clients on process improvements, capital-raising transactions, and mergers and acquisitions.
Jennifer is a Certified Public Accountant and received her B.S. from Rowan University in New Jersey.
http://www.ashtontechgroup.com/aleaders/andrews.html