Loop, slow Saturday and got some time to read the boards. Gonna share somebody else's "rational man" ideas in ref to your comments copied below(with my bold and added comments in parens);
"This recent short increase report is the second most puzzling event of 2003. The first of course is the size of the unscheduled blocks sold by our COB, COO and other officers when the company was stating "days" for the Nok/Samsung ratification process of the Ericy rate. I am still shocked over these sales with the information being provided to the street and the shareholders at that time. (In Loop's personal opinion) The sales fall short of the reasonable man theory regardless of the spin one wishes to place upon them. If you throw all matters aside, "why" is still present regarding the sales."
Maybe I don't pass the "reasonable man" test even when I'm cold sober, but if I do, then here's what I thought(and then moved on) regarding those recent insider sales.... Human nature... Think about the possibility that the top brass at InterDigital have been fighting for their dignity, honor, and some cash to celebrate with, for almost as long as some of us have been frustrated shareholders.
OK, got that picture? Well, maybe everything they have been fighting and working for just fell into place. Ericsson capitulated, the rest is a solid lock, and they KNOW THAT! It's "high fives" time in the KOP executive conference rooms, i.e., remember those "The sun is shining brightly and the skies are blue over KOP" comments from our usually understated CEO on March 17? Well, IMHO human nature goes a long way towards providing an explanation that it was time to get a "taste of what is coming". Those guys have plenty of shares to sell, and a lot more coming(we bitch about THAT when we are not over chewing the sales of any of them, LOL!). Cash out a few thousand shares while the window is open and celebrate the moment makes a lot of "rational man" sense IMHO.
Little digression here. I am a retired saleman. Remember getting my first big sale back when the family was still eating our meals off a piece of varnished plywood that I screwed some legs on. Sitting in "hand me down" chairs that did not match anything. The way sales commissions worked back then was that the salemen got paid when the equipment got installed. That was a good 7 months after I got that first order, but Momma got a brand new $5,000 plus hand carved mahogany dining room set a week after I got the order. The money to pay for it was coming, and I wanted to spend some NOW!
