Replies to post #3930 on The Jailhouse (JAIL)

[CharleyMike]

There are some here who feel that he was within his right and well justified in his reaction.

There are those here who, while not your ally or supporter, came to your defense and attempted to persuade him that he had over-reacted. Whether those attempts were successful or not, for reasons unknown to all but you and him, he has shown that he is at least willing to listen to you and others even while you attack him.

Some people (usually but not always ~ men) believe so strongly in the sanctity of their given word that nothing else has comparable value when swearing an oath. Yet they refuse to swear an oath on the life of their loved ones because they always consider the possibility that they might unknowingly be in error.

Both of you revealed much to the world yesterday. You have much to offer the rest of us, as does he. It's time now to put aside old slights, allow the wounds to heal, and begin anew.

[Bob Zumbrunnen]

I have no idea who your mother is and did nothing to anyone's account but yours.

When I blocked your IP address, and you came back to post via another, I blocked that one as well.

I also changed the code that allows terminated people to post to this board. Which is why we probably haven't heard from a few people. I just now undid that change.

If I revealed myself to be human, so be it. It's about damned time. I'm sick and damned tired of this "Emily Post with a beard" personna that got slapped on me.

Now I know this is an utter waste of keystrokes, but here goes:

I have shorted companies and have bought puts on companies. 95% or more of my activity in the market over the past 7 years has been on the long side. More than half of the rest has been in Puts. Mostly AOL puts, to be more precise.

Most of the shorting I've done has been either shorting stocks that I felt ran too far on news (those were always daytrades) or stocks I felt had reached the top of a predictable range or gotten past it without (IMO) truly "breaking out".

I once unintentionally found myself short BAAT when my sell order was basically executed twice, and I was forced to cover at market the next day. Long story which I've already told.

I can't possibly remember all of my trades, but I believe the lowest share price at which I've ever shorted a stock was $12. It was THDO (which currently trades at about 70 cents). It's possible I shorted that one lower, but I'm not certain. It was a stock I traded both long and short after learning its rhythms. SRE and QTRN are the other two that come readily to mind.

You asked, though, whether I've ever profitably shorted "exposed" stocks. Let's remove "profitably" from the question and leave at just whether or not I've ever shorted them, whether profitably or not.

If by "exposed", you mean stocks that A@P or others like him have publicly labeled POS stocks, the answer is No. I never tried to keep up with their posts and once I became admin at SI, the only non-administrative reading I did was to further my own education or for entertainment.

I played mostly penny stocks before I got that job, but once I got it, I didn't anymore. I was too busy for the amount of digging and watchfulness required. Initially (after many accusations to the legal department just like yours), I was forbidden to be in the market at all. Several months later, they agreed to let me trade stocks; just not ones with active boards on SI unless I identified those stocks and forwarded all TOfU complaints regarding those boards to Legal for them to decide the handling of those complaints.

The only such boards I can recall were THDO and RDRT, which never had complaints.

During my time at SI, I traded SRE, QTRN, and THDO the most, by a long shot.

Now it's possible that someone somewhere "exposed" a stock that I was short or later went short, but the two would be unrelated. I NEVER shorted a stock because anyone on SI had said it was a good idea. Not while I was working there. Before I took the job, I frequently (almost always) owned AOL Puts and actively discussed AOL on SI.

That's about as detailed and complete an explanation I can possibly give short of publishing all of my trading records for the past several years, which I won't do.

I and the legal department at Go2Net frequently received complaints (most claiming to have proof) that I was part of or the head of a shorting conspiracy. Without exception, these complaints centered around penny stocks with wildly-active free-for-alls on SI. Also, without exception, I was booting people left and right for their inability to stay within the rules.

It's a fact that most of the people being booted claimed to be long, and from that arose the accusation that I was "targeting" longs. Then from that arose the "conclusion" that I was doing so because they had the potential to push these companies upward, causing losses from my alleged short positions.

The fact of the matter was that people were being booted for their inability to play by the rules.

But nothing bad that happens to most people is ever their own fault. So if I terminated an account because they posted, "If you don't quit posting here I'm going to tear off your ******* head and **** down your ******* neck, you ******* moron.", the "reason" they were terminated is that they were endangering an enormous short position (usually in excess of the O/S) that I supposedly had. It was never their fault. It was always mine.

Did I notice that most of the people I was suspending or terminating in these discussions were longs? Definitely. Should I have used some artifice to bring a sort of "balance" to the suspensions? Definitely not. The suspensions didn't need to be balanced.

I only suspended/terminated accounts because they broke the rules for posting there. Period.

That's not to say I *never* suspended/terminated shorts. If they broke the rules, no matter who they were or their purported position in a stock, they were suspended or terminated. Ask Sir Auric if he'd ever been suspended. Ask A@P if I ever suspended his account. Hell, ask him if I ever *terminated* it and how, if I terminated his account, he managed to get his posting privileges back.

There. I had no responsibility to prove myself innocent, but have stated my "case" as completely as I can.

Now, since you accused me of precisely what I claim I didn't do, why do you accuse me of that? What proof do you have of my guilt? If not proof, why do you *think* it's true?

Another thing. Would it have been wrong to have profitably shorted stocks that'd been identified as POS's?

I don't think so. I didn't do it, but the reason wasn't that I thought it was wrong. Nor was it because that's what my employer demanded (it was I who suggested my trading be limited to stocks not actively discussed on SI).

I didn't do it because I didn't want to deal with any appearance of conflict of interest and because though I trust myself to be fair and impartial, not being involved in such stocks was a small price to pay to ensure that there was no subconscious motivation on my part when doing my job.

I don't want to give the appearance (even to fools who will take you at your word) of wrong-doing on my part by not responding to your allegation, so there it is.

What makes you think I've done what you accuse me of having done? That ball is in your court.

And regards my having been "fired" from SI, as I've said before, the author of the original article did tell me they saw the posts about it long ago and regretted having used the word "fired" instead of laid off, and changed the wording appropriately in their online version, but here's what I found in a related story done by the WSJ. It was the first link I found when I did a Google search on my name:

"Silicon Investor fired Bob Zumbrunnen, a fixture on the site since 1997 known by many users by his online screen name, SI Bob, as part of 250 job cuts at its parent company, Infospace Inc., a Bellevue, Wash., company that offers a variety of Internet services to businesses and consumers. Silicon Investor now has one moderator. "

I was part of a layoff.

Who gets laid off? In the case of most companies, and where more than one person is doing one function, the more expensive ones. If I was fired for some misdeed (I wasn't), then you'd have to believe that we're talking about a really amazing coincidence or a really bizarre conspiracy.

InfoSpace knew little about SI (likely still doesn't except that it's probably stemming their cash-bleeding the most) so what they saw was two people doing the same job.

One of those people had a higher salary than the other and also (most importantly, IMO) had a really large batch of in-the-money stock options (thanks to splits and them having to sweeten the deal for me substantially because I was taking a big pay cut to take the job) that weren't vested yet and would never be vested if he were laid off. The other person had a lower salary and far fewer options, and all of his options were underwater and would likely always be.

So if you know nothing about the two seemingly redundant people, which ones gets laid off?

And if you jump to the conclusion that INSP wouldn't factor in someone's unvested options when deciding whether or not to let them go, you're unaware of just how frequently they've been successfully sued over precisely that.

I've said my piece. Likely a waste of time where you're concerned, but hopefully any reader will decide who made the stronger case; the accused or the accuser.