Article: Overstock.com dukes it out with short sellers

Article - Media, Publications

Overstock.com dukes it out with short sellers

The Associated Press, 12 June 2006

Most people buy stock hoping the price goes up, but hedge fund manager David Rocker was “shorting” shares of Utah-based Internet retailer Overstock.com Inc., betting the share price would decline.

Rocker’s fund was making a legal bet that Overstock shares in 2004 were overvalued and due for a correction. Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne, however, sued, accusing New York-based Rocker Partners of collaborating on disparaging reports with the stock-research firm Gradient Analytics of Scottsdale, Ariz., while Rocker was shorting the shares. Continue reading “Article: Overstock.com dukes it out with short sellers”

Article: Byrne caring and generous

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Byrne caring and generous

Deseret News, 29 May 2006

I read Lee Davidson’s annual article on the top political contributors in Utah. What should be written is a companion piece on how much money to charity and research these men and women give annually. The amount surpasses political donations by millions.

Mr. Davidson goes in great detail about Dr. Patrick Byrne of Overstock.com. The people of Utah should know about another side of Dr. Byrne’s generosity. Patrick gave $100,000 to the Boys & Girls Clubs of South Valley this year without us asking. Nor did he seek any acclaim or recognition. He did it because he cares about kids and the potential of every child. Continue reading “Article: Byrne caring and generous”

Article: Brokers in an Uproar over Utah Law Cracking Down on “Naked Short Selling”

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Brokers in an Uproar over Utah Law Cracking Down on “Naked Short Selling”

Lincoln Journal Star cited by RGM Communications via Wayback, 28 May 2006

A bill approved by the Utah Legislature is causing an angry revolt among Wall Street firms with Utah operations.

The measure cracks down on a stock trading practice defended by some as necessary for orderly markets and assailed by others as easily exploited for stock manipulation.

At issue is short selling, the investors’ practice of borrowing stock and selling it, hoping the share price declines so they can buy cheaper shares, return them to the lender and pocket the difference.

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Article: Circle Group Zeroes In on Naked Shorts

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Circle Group Zeroes In on Naked Shorts

ThinkAdvisor, 2 May 2006

”Any wrongdoers will be taken to the mat,” said the chairman and chief executive of Circle Group Holdings Inc., Gregory J. Halpern, in a salvo issued in a statement Monday (April 17). “We’ve come to fight and we believe that by joining forces with John O’Quinn, his team of lawyers and A-list experts, we will prevail.”

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Web: Arne Alsin’s Article on Fails-To-Deliver

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Arne Alsin’s Article on Fails-To-Deliver

Bud Burrell, Arne Alsin

RealMoney cited by Sanity Check via Wayback, 17 April 2006

There is a systemic problem in the equity market, but the magnitude of the problem is impossible to gauge because the parties involved refuse to answer a simple question: Why?

My mutual fund purchased five blocks of stock in Overstock (OSTK:Nasdaq) during the first quarter. There was a failure to deliver shares in four out of the five purchases, with delays for delivery lasting as long as three weeks. Nobody can tell me why shares were not delivered within the requisite three-day settlement period — the so-called T+3 requirement.

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Article: Short-Sellers Are Burned by Novastar

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Short-Sellers Are Burned by Novastar

Roddy Boyd

New York Post, 16 April 2006

One Midwestern financial company, long a target of short-sellers, has deployed an infrequently used tactic to inflict pain on its naysayers: Its management has put in place a strategy that consistently makes money.

The stock of Novastar Financial, a Kansas City, Mo.-based home-equity real estate investment trust, has been a battleground between long-term holders in love with its juicy dividends and short-sellers who suspect that the company has massive default risk with those loans.

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Web: The Golden Rule of Professional Shorting: Never Short a Company Without an Inside Rat

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The Golden Rule of Professional Shorting: Never Short a Company Without an Inside Rat

Bud  Burrell

Sanity Check via Wayback, 9 March  2006

There is one genuinely “Golden Rule” for professional short seller/raiders.

You never short a stock without an insider to leak manageable information to you. That insider might be an officer, director, control person, investor, analyst, inside legal counsel, outside legal counsel, or even a lowly disgruntled non-executive employee.

In working on some hundred plus companies directly since 1995, I have never once seen this rule broken. Many times the CEO’s of these companies have resisted this idea, but in NO INSTANCE have I seen even one exception to this rule when they were finally forced to look in on their own operations.

There is a process for looking for raider attacks on companies, but many are flawed strategically, because they are only looking out, and not in. I have been challenged by a number of clients on this, but when they would spend the money to use competent investigators, they always found the connection of an insider to the raiders. Moreover, they found the miscreant in ways admissable in Court, in phone records, emails, and more. This is not dissimilar to what Overstock’s investigator found outside the Company.

If you want a broadly known example, simply look at the Nabisco deal and KKR. The number three operating guy at RJR/Nabisco told them where all the bodies were buried, and ended up running the operations of the Company for them when they won the takeover battle.

Officers and Directors have a duty to insure that sensitive inside information about their company is not being leaked to anyone, unless it is someone doing so for ethical reasons. I have seen more than once the use of such informants by the SEC, NASD, and others. This is a more complex issue if discovered. No matter what, such a person must be quarantined until appropriate third party investigation can determine the foundation for such actions. Many times it is based on weak premises, but not always. You only have to look at Enron, Worldcomm, Global Crossing and more to see good outcomes from such behavior.

For your consideration.

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Article: Corporate reform dead; SEC chief should resign

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Corporate reform dead; SEC chief should resign

Loren Steffy

Houston Chronicle, 1 March 2006

Corporate governance reform is dead. Its last gasp was stifled by the subpoenas issued last month by the Securities and Exchange Commission against several news organizations and writers.

Last week, Marketwatch .com columnist Herb Greenberg and Dow Jones Newswires columnist Carol Remond acknowledged receiving the subpoenas, which involved stories about Internet retailer Overstock .com.

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Web: Stockgate Report – Investrend Article on Targeting of DTCC by NASAA members for Subpoenas

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Stockgate Report: Investrend Article on Targeting of DTCC by NASAA members for Subpoenas

Bud Burrell

FinancialWire cited by Sanity Check via Wayback, 14 February 2006

FinancialWire has learned from a highly-placed informed source that the Depository Trust and Clearing Corp. appears to be a target of an enforcement action by the multi-state task force formed by the North American Securities Administrators Association.

If so, this would explain a recent flurry of posts and press releases by the DTCC denying any complicity in the exploding national illegal manipulative trading scandal known as StockGate, embroiling Netflix (NASDAQ: NFLX), Overstock (NASDAQ: OSTK), Krispy Kreme Donuts (NYSE: KKD) and Martha Stewart OmniLiving (NYSE: MSO), as well as provide a measure of validation to rampant rumors that the clearing house, jointly owned by the NASD and the New York Stock Exchange has received subpoenas.

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Article: Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne is waging an EXTRAORDINARY CAMPAIGN against short-sellers. The hedge fund guys say he has underperformed. He says they are tools of a sinister “SITH LORD.”

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Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne is waging an EXTRAORDINARY CAMPAIGN against short-sellers. The hedge fund guys say he has underperformed. He says they are tools of a sinister “SITH LORD.”

BETHANY MCLEAN, 14 November 2005

Even hardened denizens of Wall Street were shocked by a conference call that Patrick Byrne, the CEO of online retailer Overstock.com, held on Aug. 12. “I want to get something off my chest,” Byrne announced. Then he launched into a rant about a “miscreants ball” in which he mentioned hedge funds, journalists, investigators, trial lawyers, the SEC, and even Eliot Spitzer. “I believe there’s been a plan since we were in our teens to destroy our stock, drive it down to $6–$10 … and even a plan for how the company would then get whacked up.” The “designated final owner,” who provided the “orchestration,” was someone Byrne dubbed the “Sith Lord,” a person he refused to identify other than to say that “he’s one of the master criminals from the 1980s.” And that’s just the basic outline. There was more. As Mark Cuban, the billionaire investor, later wrote on his blog, “Never before in the history of Wall Street has a single conference call mentioned the following topics: miscreants, an unnamed Sith Lord he hopes the feds will bury under a prison, gay bathhouses, whether he is gay, does cocaine, both or neither, and an obligatory ‘not that there is anything wrong with that,’ phone taps, phone lines misdirected to Mexico, arrested reporters, payoffs, conspiracies, crooks, egomaniacs, fools, paranoia, which newspapers are shills and for who, payoffs, money laundering, his Irish temper, false identities, threats, intimidation, and private investigators. All in 61 minutes.” Cuban is now short 20,000 shares of Overstock. Continue reading “Article: Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne is waging an EXTRAORDINARY CAMPAIGN against short-sellers. The hedge fund guys say he has underperformed. He says they are tools of a sinister “SITH LORD.””

Article: Overstock’s phantom menace

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Overstock’s phantom menace

Bethany McLean

CNN Money, 1 November 2005

Patrick Byrne, the 42-year-old CEO of online retail liquidator Overstock.com, is under growing pressure to deliver numbers that prove his business will make money.

Certainly the third-quarter results, announced on Friday, Oct. 28, did not help his cause. Once again Overstock.com (Research) lost far more than analysts were expecting.

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Article: Overstock’s Three Affidavits

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Overstock’s Three Affidavits

John Reeves, 05 October 2005

The nearly endless fount of mirth surrounding Patrick Byrne’s lawsuit against Gradient Analytics, short-selling hedge fund Rocker Partners, and others is obscuring a case with fairly broad implications for security analysis, First Amendment rights, and the credibility of our public markets.

While fanciful visions of Sith Lords and evil shorting hordes make for good copy, this is a lawsuit that is about something more substantive: an accusation that Gradient and Rocker resorted to unfair business practices to knock down Overstock.com’s (NASDAQ:OSTK) share price. Too much coverage has been spent plumbing the entertainment value, and nearly none on the facts of the suit itself. Continue reading “Article: Overstock’s Three Affidavits”

Article: Who’s Behind Naked Shorting?

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Who’s Behind Naked Shorting?

Karl Thiel

The Motley Fool, 30 March 2005

The subject of naked short selling has gained some momentum with the introduction of Reg SHO early this year and a rising tide of complaint from companies like Overstock.com (NASDAQ:OSTK) and others. But in addition to this general attention, 12 separate lawsuits have accused the DTCC itself of engineering naked short-selling schemes. Nine of these, according to Thompson, have been dismissed or withdrawn, while three are still pending.

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