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I THINK I agree with you, but I'm not REALLY sure what you are suggesting. If you are simply saying MS isn't untouchable, then obviously that is true. I'd argue there never has been and never will be a company which is untouchable.

If you are saying however, that MS's cash reserves are dangerously low (because of huge infrastructure) then I'd strongly disagree. I really don't know how or why you would think that. MS makes WAY more money then they can spend and even with zero growth (or significant negative performance) are in no immediate danger of not being able to cover all expenses just from revenue let alone the huge cash reserves. When people here speculate about effect on MS if stock prices were to collaps (though there is no reason to suspect they would), they seem to think that MS loses tons of money when the stock goes down. This of course is not true. The main dangers of lower stock price are shareholders demanding new management and the company being taken over (another company being able to purchase controlling interest because of low stock price). The biggest financial effect of lower stock price is if a company has high debt or needs more financing (neither of which apply to MS). Yes, it is always bad for a company to have its stock price fall, but its not as financially damaging as some here seem to believe. Here is an explaination.

One other thing worth mentioning about your comparison of IBM and MS. While the situation of IBM when it took its hit, may look similar to MS today on the surface it really isn't THAT similar. Yes, they are both big tech companies, but that is where the substantial similarities end. You must remember at the time IBM was largely a hardware fabrication company. Yes, they did software (hadn't REALLY gotten big in "servies" yet), but the hardware was the back-bone of the company. When looking at company financials this is a HUGE difference. Hardware fabrication is hugely capital intensive. The plants, the equipement, etc cost huge sums. While it is true these are assets the times in which tech changes means these assets depreciate VERY fast and need to be replaced with newer (and normally more expensive) equipment. This model requires much more cash on hand and any change in revenue can have a huge impact. IBM was hit by the tidalwave of cheap PCs and couldn't recoup all teh capital costs associated with the hardware. This lead them into a bit of debt and was causing problems. However, they were big enough to weather the storm, readjust, and come out a very strong company. The point being MS's and IBM's (at the time) underlying financials were VERY different at least in the amount of expense just to keep the company running and the rate of depreciation for those expenditures.

They've already agreed to piss away $37 billion for exactly those reasons - the stockholders were getting scared.

OK, I'm not sure how many times I'm going to have to hear this ;-) Its OK for tech types not to understand economics or financial markets (hey you cannot know everything), but then don't pretend like you do please.

First, the one-time bulk dividend you are refering to was approx 32 billion not 37 (not really important). Anyway, it will most likely actually be higher than that as that dividend was actually part of a three piece four year plan. Besides the one-time bulk divedend, MS also planned a stock buy-back and an additional raise in normal dividends over a four year period based on performance. This three part plan could equal as much as 75 billion over four years. Now I won't go over the calculations AGAIN, but basically with crazy assumptions to the low side, at the end of the four years MS will still have at least 30 billion in cash (more realistic numbers would have that number much closer to 40 billion).

OK, besides the numbers its important to understand WHY this is being done. No, its not because anyone is scared ;-) At the time of this decision, MS had almost 60 billion in cash (56 I believe at last reporting period). Also, at that point its market cap was just below 250 billion. Thats getting close to having 25% of thier market cap just sitting in cash. Another way to look at it is they had about 90 billion in assets on the balance sheet so that about 65% of assets in cash. Not good!!!

Now many will say "how can having that much cash not be good?". And that is a very fair question, and the fact that it isn't certainly can seem counter-intuitive on its face. However, when we all talk about the job of a corporation is to make money, we are talking mainly about making money for its shareholders (not to make the corporation itself rich). Yes, you do need to have some cash on hand (war-chest) and what that amount is, is not easy to calculate. It will depend on industry, company outlook, short and long term plans, etc, etc, etc. Coming up with a number for this is very complicated, but every company should have a target cash-on-hand number (thats what CFOs are for). Again, this number is not easy to calculate, but anyone looking at financials and understanding MS knew they had TOO MUCH cash. They are making money faster then they can spend it and unless they were planning the purcahse of IBM or something, it was just getting rediculous. The job of the corporation is to make money for shareholders and keep itself happy, but historically MS has just horded all of its cash. As a shareholder, I'm going to get a bit miffed if they already have more cash then they can resonably spend and just keep adding 10 billion a year to thier cash position instead of paying that out to shareholders.

While you think this was done out of fear, it really points in the opposite direction. When a company sees tough times ahead, they will try to raise thier cash reserves to be able to weather whatever is ahead. The tech industry has traditionally horded cash, because they are young want to be VERY safe (and may not have a "traditional" CFO). This payout if anything shows they are maturing as a company and feel VERY safe. As a rule (of course depending on other factors) you want to hold just enough cash to pay expenses and a nice "war-chest" just in case. In the case of MS, that war-chest was getting rediculous to the point of many seeing it as plain irresponsible. Cash like most other things isn't always more == better.

A very basic explaination about corporations cash. If you want to do more reading on this just google for "too much cash in reserves" and you can find plenty of discussion on this.

I smell a death spiral

The 10Q is a filing with the SEC required by all public companies over a certain size. It discloses a lot of informaiton.

http://www.investopedia.com/terms/1/10q.asp

Ex-parte motion:

"Ex parte refers to a motion or petition by or for one party. An ex parte judicial proceeding is on where the opposing party has not received notice nor is present. This is an exception to the usual rule of court procedure and due process rights that both parties must be present at any argument before a judge."
(Source: http://www.uslegalforms.com/lawdigest/legal-defini tions.php/US/US-EX_PARTE.htm
)

About the 10-Q:

"What does it Mean? A quarterly report submitted by all public companies to the SEC in which firms are required to disclose relevant information regarding their financial position. This must be done on time, and the information should be available to all interested parties." (Source: http://www.investopedia.com/terms/1/10q.asp)

---
In other words...

This means that SCO wanted to play dirty on Linux er, IBM, by doing legal things on their back, this is, without IBM being present for the legal actions to take place - but judge Kimball didn't allow them to do so. Also, SCO also published their quarterly report.

(RTFW <-- words of wisdom to slashdotters regarding legalese ;-) )

Well...according to efficient market hypothesis, I don't make money, but I am still trading. Bit of a paradox, except that my strategy is to make money off the people trying to make money off the massive run-ups that follow good news. Pick a pop and short it. Just don't get too greedy or too patient. Follow your bovine instincts; they will make you happy as a Hindu heifer.

As always, exchange rates are used without any thoughts of PPP.

The price of Rs. 200 is roughly $17 PPP.

I'll second the doubt about Microsoft ever doing this, and add more reasons. R&D costs are always expensed in the current period; to do otherwise is not according to GAAP. Furthermore, R&D is given a substantial tax credit -- not a deduction, a credit. I believe it's $1 for $1, so if you classify an expense as R&D, it comes right off your tax bill. At my company, every year I have to fill out a form asking how much of my department's activity goes toward R&D (costs such as customer support doesn't count, for example).

Q. Why do they call this the Laffer curve?
A. Because it's a joke!!!

Boo random economics jokes.

To say that the trust fund is just a bunch of IOU's implies that the US government is deliberately planning to default on its debt. Only the US and UK have never defaulted on a debt payment.

In the financial world there is the concept of the risk free rate of return. The rate on US treasury bonds IS the risk free rate of return, meaning that there is zero risk of default.

If the government backing the world's reference currency were to default on its debt, the result would be an economic collapse that would make Social Security the least of our problems.

Your post, like much of republican propaganda is either misinformed, or deliberately misleading.

Pyramid schemes always do, for those that make it to the top of the pyramid

This particular type of pyramid scheme is less evil than others, because no one really loses much. The monetary input is not provided by the lower scales of the pyramid (the "suckers"), but by companies which essentially pay for verified, targeted advertising. These guys have done the maths and concluded that this was a cost-effective marketing technique.

Of course you still have the basic problem of pyramid schemes, namely the necessity of exponential growth. A fundamental law of nature is that exponentials don't last very long. So while early participants did get their iPods, latecomers probably won't. But their loss will be a loss of time, not money. So it's not quite as evil as the pyramid scheme that ravaged Albania a few years ago.

Thomas

The onwer of this virtual island may [not] be a sucker.
The entire scheme relies upon this sucker finding enough lesser suckers so that he can turn a profit. If enough lesser suckers are found, he is renamed from "sucker" to "successful businessman".
This pyramid of suckers continues until enough of them decide that buying a virtual grain of sand on a virtual beach on a virtual island isn't worth either one virtual or real cent, whereupon the virtual volcano on the island will explode, destroying all real evidence of a scam and the perpetrators will go off with the profits and take over Worldcom, Enron etc,.
Personally, I'll stick to buying tulip bulbs as a less risky business venture.

Why are we introducing the chances for errors into our most important civic institution? This is insanity! As another poster wrote there is no reason that a printout will accurately reflect how the machine handles your input, it's only showing you what was sent to the printer. We have so many other obfuscating problems as well, like magnets and code tampering and using phone lines to transmit results.

The real problem is taking the physical stylus out of the hand of the voter. I would only consider eVoting for disabled persons, and I would think the majority of them have few problems.

1) To avoid fraud, why not submit the ballot into more than one ballot box. One for each candidate on the ticket. If democrats and republicans have their own ballot box - they'll likely have the same number of votes - the incentive to cheat is removed without duopoly.

2) Allow all candidates nationwide to be on the ballot if they garner .5% in the polls. It'll be 10 people and 10 ballot boxes per precinct - tops. Wood is not expensive so don't go there.

Here's a nice page to Federal Contact Information http://www.eff.org/congress/ - tell them what you think - you're on /. so you've got more insight than most folks.

Since Walmart is so big, they have some monopsony power: they (the buyer) can set the prices at which they buy. Since RIAA is an oligopoly, they set the prices at which they sell. ``Monopoly v. monopoly'' just doesn't make sense.

Really, it should be ``oligopsonist meet oligopolist'' since the RIAA is a cartel of producers.

Since Walmart is so big, they have some monopsony power: they (the buyer) can set the prices at which they buy. Since RIAA is an oligopoly, they set the prices at which they sell. ``Monopoly v. monopoly'' just doesn't make sense.

Really, it should be ``oligopsonist meet oligopolist'' since the RIAA is a cartel of producers.

...for those of us who never heard of it:

When: 1711

Where: United Kingdom

The amount the market declined from peak to bottom: In 1711, stocks in the South Sea Company were traded for 1000 British pounds (unadjusted for inflation) and then were reduced to nothing. A massive amount of money was lost.

Rest of the article: http://www.investopedia.com/features/crashes/crash es3.asp

- Who needs a sig?

on NASDAQ there is no requirement that a trader take a position as counterparty. Pink sheets, good luck finding anyone to trade with.

Listed stocks on the NYSE do have specialists who ensure order flow and who eat unwanted shares, as you state. This is not the case in NASDAQ.

This reference will help explain things:
Investopedia definition of market makers and specialists.

The line you're looking for is the 4th "role" of an NYSE specialist, acting as "Principal".

I disagree with the conclusion of the article that there is not much difference between a NASDAQ market maker and a NYSE specialist. The specialist is actually in control of the market for a stock, and in exchange for that monopoly, he is obligated to trade in the stock as necessary to keep things moving. A NASDAQ market maker is in open competition with other market makers and does not have a monopoly.

Last time I checked, you can't buy something unless the owner wants to sell it to you.

Check again. Don't know if Apple Corps is a publically traded company, but your supposition is not correct on its face.

Good ideas are not adopted automatically. They must be driven into practice with courageous patience.
-- Admiral Hyman G. Rickover

Good luck finding a brokerage firm that has SCO on their "short list" at this point.

Are we seeing postmortem twitching, I know little of WAP, but I believe the phrase that you are looking for is: "A dead cat bounce" :-)

That financial markets are stochastic is an assumption - with extreme levels of 'deterministic noise' it can appear stochastic - a small difference when specifying an equation to predict a future level can make a massive difference: this is chaotic. Stochastic modelling works OK because of the large levels of noise, most modern finance is built on the assumption errors are Gaussian, a framework formalised in the 60s but assumed even earlier. Sadly today anyone can trot out a Black Scholes thesis, support the group think in academia, and get a PhD from a decent institution (a disease in many disciplines other than economics/finance).

Think of financial markets like the weather - tomorrow is more likely to be the same as today, some minor variance, but saying it is going to be largely similar will mean you're right most of the time: this doesn't help pedict a storm. Likewise tomorrow the stockmarkets will likely be the same as today, but this doesn't help predict a crash. As weather the stock market model can be refined, but in the end it is chaotic and hugely deterministic (many agents looking at each other and others actions).

Many agents looking at each other's actions is important - the market does not exist without agents (buyers/sellers) - it is an endogenous process. A co-operative solution will not work - someone always has to do worse for anyone to do better than the market - the market and the economy is just the sum of the actions of participants, participants cannot move against the market as they, in sum, are the market. Calling on the market to recognise a pattern is folly - a small participant can take advantage of any pattern if discovered, but the market as a whole cannot because if they stop their present action to follow/takeadvantage of/neutralise the pattern they have stopped taking action that creates the pattern.

Patterns in financial markets have long been looked into, a good starting point on current thought, if interested, is technical analysis and elliott-wave theory

If you study economics, you will hear about the Laffer Curve.
Basically it works like this:
If taxes are too low, the government is only getting a really small percentage of the money in the economy, so they don't get that much revenue.
If taxes are too high, the taxes start to smother the economy. More and more people decide that holding a second job, or getting a higher paying job that requires more work isn't really worth it. So at this point the government is getting a large percent of a small number, and so they don't get that much revenue.
Somewhere in the middle, the government revenue peaks.

So you can't really say that lowering taxes during a shortage is a bad idea (especially if the economy is in recession). Maybe the people who want to lower taxes are using this model to try to increase revenue.

Yes, a company could theoretically own itself. Much like a million and one Mom-and-Pop corner stores own themselves.

That is complete and utter nonsense. Buying back stock means that the value of the company and the number of investors is reduced, but the investors that remain still own the entire company. Let's give an example:

5 equivalent stocks are out there. The company is worth 5 million, so each stock is worth 1 million. The company now buys back 4 stocks for 4 million. The result is that the remaining stock is now worth the same as the company: 1 million. The company could buy back the last stock as well, but only by liquidating (selling all assets, thus going out of business). Another possibility is that the people who run the company use their own money to buy the remaining stocks, which would make them owners just like a Mom-and-Pop corner store. However, even then the company doesn't 'own itself', it just happens to be that the owners also run the company.

If MSFT happens to make so much money that they can afford to buy the risk back from Mr and Mrs Shareholder, then more power to them.

The reason that they are giving one-time dividends and buying back stock is actually that they make too little money. Let me explain: In the world of money, ROI is everything. Making 1 million on an investment of 1 million is good, making that same amount after investing 1 billion is not so good. Now, if a company has earned a lot of money in the past, but can't use this money to generate new profits, the value of the company becomes less and less. The stock is worth a lot (because of all the money in the company's coffers), but the profit is marginal. This makes investors very unhappy (unless the stock is increasing in value, but that is no longer a given for MS, since they are transforming from a growth stock to an income stock).

A way to fix this is to simply give the money to investors (one-time dividends). This effectively decreases the value of the company, resulting in a better profit per invested dollar (but not per share). A second possibility is to buy back stocks. This is very similar to a one-time dividend, since company money is given back to investors. However, the dividend per stock also increases, raising the value of stocks. Some more info on the advantages and disadvantages of stock buybacks.

http://www.investopedia.com/terms/l/laffercurve.as p

it basically says that at a certain point, rate increases equal revenue decreases.

of course, the economy is more complex then just that picture, so if you happen to move closer to the T rate, other economic factors might mean a decrease in revenue, or vice versa.

You're describing the laffer curve. Dr. Laffer was, incidentally, one of Reagan's economic advisors.

after 30 years of doing business, they have only made about $6 per share (which costs $27.89).

Actually, you don't read it right. Microsoft's stock has split 9 times, and 1 share in 1987 would give you 288 today. The value of one share on Sept 18, 1987 was $114.50, and the value of one share on Feb 14, 2003 was $24.96. Given that you would have 288 shares, your beginning value of $114.50 would have ended up at $7,188.48.

A quick trip to CNNMoney's Financial Calculator will tell you that's an annualized rate of return of 44%. The historical average of the DOW Jones is about 10%, the S&P 500 12%, and the NASDAQ about 14%. I'd say MSFT would have been a worthwhile investment until February of 2003.

MSFT's P/E is 40.76, while the S&P 500 is 19.4, definitely a much higher price to earnings. However, Microsoft was traditionally a growth stock, not a dividend payer.

Conclusion - MSFT may not be a great stock to own now, but it was a great stock to own for 16 years or more.

Also read about stop -loss orders on how you can limit your losses.

"There is no such thing as a sure thing" is also a cool paradox. (-:

the gaming industry is in the midst of a crisis of innovation

Two words: online gaming

If we continue down the same path as we have in the past, people may become tired of gaming

In economics they call this Diminishing Marginal Utility. The more you consume something, the less gain you experience from consuming one more unit of that thing. To combat this, marketers need to offer you something novel. I don't know why anyone would think that video-games are imune to this...

Dude.

1.) Yes, I hope that AMD stock does go up, it's slumped this week (I've lost 2.2% this week on AMD in my simulator.
2.) But, Intel is probably a good buy anyway. Tech stocks tend to follow each other more than compete. When one does will, it tends to bolster the entire industry.

Even if there are 50-55% taxes taken out, FOX is still paying that money. The voice actors are then paying it to the government. Also, I believe the tax rate works out to somewhere around 33%. It's a little wacky because you pay 10% on the first 10k or so, then ~15% up to 30k or so, etc. The top tax rate was 35% for 2004. That was for income above $319,000 a year. Note that under President Clinton, this tax rate was 38.5%, over $288k. For the purposes of this post, I used the Single brackets. When it comes to medicaid, SS, etc., over ~$88k or so of income, and your SS/MC taxes are capped. That cap is around $5,500 for SS. I couldn't quickly find a good source for the Medicare, but it slightly higher than social security.Source 1 Source 2 Source 3.

Not a typo. Vulture Funds specialize in 'distressed' investments. A money-burning operation like Air Canada certainly qualifies.

any finance prof worth his salt will tell you that there's no difference in how you finance your company (ie, debt, equity)

Any incompetant finance prof, that is. The Modigliani-Miller theorem has that premise, but it can be broken down because of tax differences, risk preferences, and of course efficient capital markets. In theory, different types of firm have different optimal capital structures (and in practice there are differences between different types of firm).

If you're interested in the theory then check out the paper Miller wrote in retrospect.

I called E-trade to see whether they would allow shorting of SCO:

E-trade only wants to short stocks for you if they are reasonably liquid, i. e. it is easy to find a seller whenever you want to buy (buyer when you want to sell).

If the company is too small and there aren't many shares being traded, and the stock is illiquid, prices that you might get might be a little weird. Also it is easy for people to manipulate the market in that stock. You are particularly vulnerable to the market being manipulated if you are short (see e. g. Short Squeeze).

E-trade is reluctant to short SCO on your behalf, as it is a relatively small company, and the stock is relatively illiquid. With a market capitalization of around 180M it is borderline, really.

The shareholders don't want them taking risks with their money.
I had better opinion about American shareholders. I thought in the country with the most developed stock market in the world people would appreciate theories like CAPM better. If you want safe returns, buy Treasure bonds, or at least invest in index funds. If you want high returns, realise that you pay with higher risks for them. And if you want high returns with low risks, you need to find a company you believe in, where managers are excellent at identifying new attractive money making opportunities. And that means let them RISK if they know their shit!

The way he pays for everything else ... by cutting taxes, of course!

Hey mod this guy up, he actually knows what he's talking about.

Also, people might do well to understand the concept of velocity of money which deals with the same idea, namely how much and how quickly money gets passed around.

Hi,

I'm the author. Thanks for discussing my piece. Here are some points to consider.

1) Moral hazard does not mean the record industry has 'morals'. It's a technical term - like grep, or chmod. It means that one party in a contract can take hidden action - like your babysitter - because you can't effectively monitor or influence them.

2) I'm arguing that the record industry should provide free music - not the other way around. Insurance is just another form of free music - whether you get reimbursed in money that you can spend on free music, or free MP3's, or free music vouchers.

3) An efficient market is not a monopoly. An efficient market for music is what all of us really want: a place where we can pay as much for music as the value we derive from it. The problem we're all facing is that the market for music is inefficient - that the music industry can price-fix, gouge, shirk on it's contract, and earn more profits by exploiting such tactics.

4) I'm not 'trying to give control to the RIAA'. In fact, it's the other way around. Read what DVD Jon has to say about buying into DRM - iTunes is nice, but by buying into it, you're also buying into DRM. I'm trying to argue that DRM sucks - and that entirely new business models are the only thing that will work - and iTunes is just the same old model wrapped in a nice interface. I'm trying to prove why the RIAA wants the game to stay the same - so it can keep selling the same old risky contract to all of us, in exchange for greater profits.

4.1) Not all MBA's are beancounters. Get over it.

Umair

The rational for an auction may be a Benefit for the technology community. Getting an IPO stock allocation is almost impossible for most investors, and without a VERY large trading account, or a good friend at the issuing company, you have no chance. By offering the initial release at auction, and thus bypassing the IPO process, Google has an opportunity to get its stock into the hands of the ?community? and not just institutional traders. Creating a level playing field for all who want to participate. (Im sure the SEC still has rules governing who can participate, but I haven?t found any with a quick search) If you want a quick overview of the IPO process, and how it relates to traders. Have a look (atInvestopedia.com)

Thank God you all are not math majors or even business majors... Hopefully you're not working stiffs in those areas either.

One would deduce that the last post in this thread is the most correct, although you could expound upon that.

Gift Cert $50
Markup $15
cost of Cert $50

Pre-sale profit (Gross)= $15 per cert.

But there are additional costs of doing business that may NOT be accounted for:

DIRECT COGS (Cost of good sold)
Less ebay Listing Fee (variable) approx 4% listing fees
Less Paypal transaction fee 2.2-2.9%+ paypal fees
Less your cost of doing business (variable)
- electricity of the computer you use
- expense of equipment (scanner, computer, software...)
- ISP connection charge...

Less possible labor expenses (if you had to pay someone to do this)

INDIRECT COGS
Less lost opportunity cost (what you could have made doing something else)

and finally less your opportunity cost of Capital (what you could have made putting your $ in a bank/CD/money market, if your $ wasn't tied up waiting for an ebay bid to happen) calculating Weighted Cost of Capital and/or Opportunity cost

So perhaps the actual transaction resemble something like this on a monthly basis:

Gross Profit ($15 x 4 certs) = $60
Less direct costs of goods sold (guessing 10% of sales price $5 x 4 items) = $20
Less indirect cost of goods sold (guessing 5% of sales price $5 x 4 items) = $10

Leave you with roughly $30/ month in Earnings Before the real issues ....

Your Time... at $???
(What you should pay someone to do this crap)
Assumne what you will, but I wouldn't bother with anything less than $20 / hour and this will take someone at least 10 minutes to do manually.

Calculate that per hour, unless your Bill Gates who earns $4,000 per minute

Then you compare that to opportunity cost of capital and....

Geese.

No wonder why Apple hasn't tried this.

>
>Why Gen-Xers do it better
>Cheznathalie.com
>

Stock price charts only record the latest sale, which may have been a transaction for 100 shares ... which leads to a practice called "painting the tape", so the rising on tiny volumes could be various persons buying and selling small lots just to get the price back up to where they can unload another big chunk onto the clamoring mass of day traders.

Also see http://www.in-the-money.com/glossarynet/painting.h tm and http://www.andrewtobias.com/bkoldcolumns/010720.ht ml

" Another question are identities of purchasers of stock public record?"Big ones, yes ... check the link called "insider" on Yahoo's charts.

If something major is in the works, like 9/11, what are the odds that someone, somewhere along the line wouldn't have placed some serious bets?

In our market economy, it is called Short Selling, and Osama Bin Laden et al., may have made billions from it. Given the volume of trading, it is very difficult to track and account.

I mean, you do know who is running this thing, right?

I'm not sure if you are being sarcastic there, or not. The forces at play in this political polygomy are not entirely transparent.

Unless and until you become a monopoly, you can give away whatever you damn well like.

First go read about the Sherman Anti-Trust act, and then familiarize yourself with the concept of a "loss-leader".

Unfortunately, I work for a company that makes stock option plan management software. This company will of course, remain unnamed. However, I deal with this shit, each and every day of my life. I thus can't resist but point out how rediculous your post is.

Cashing in options on insider info is totally illegal. That's insider trading, bud.

Insider trading does not APPLY to stock options. Stock options are NOT stocks. They are options! (duhhh!) AKA derivative securities. They derive their value from future ownership. You can exercise stock options whenever they vest. It is theoretically possible someone could then sell those stocks at some future pivotal state, but I can tell you that 95%+ of optionees do same day sales, as soon as the stock in the money. That being the case, insider trading is pretty much impossible since they are waiting a long time for those options to vest. Note, that is a figure I observe after having see hundreds of databases in my days.

If your broker has proof you have the options, he should have NO PROBLEM shorteslling the stock the second you call him to do it, and then you replace the short with your options. THAT is how you get current market price on options, without risk.

I don't play the market in that fashion myself. But most stocks that are underwater are flat... You aren't going to make any money shorting the stock because the value isn't going to be changing. Its already worthless, especially today.

What does short selling have to do with stock options? Absolutely nothing Short selling, by the very definition is selling of stock you do not own. Usually, it is stock owned by the broker or from another client. This stock is lended to you, and you promise to buy it in the future. It is a loan, and a gamble. As any true loan, it can be called by the owner. So you can't keep it forever. But to make a long story short, when you buy back the stock if the price is lower than the day you borrowed it, the difference is credited to your account. If the price is higher than the day you borrowed it, you owe the difference. Read more here.

Exercising options on the open market and then holding the stock is a BAD idea.... there is a taxable benefit on the difference between what you paid and fair market value of the stock. It's not considered capital gains.. which means if the stock goes down, you get a capital loss, but you can't offset your tax obligation.

This is what really proves you don't know anything about stock options. Congress has allowed for the first $100,000 of stock acquired in a calender year to be sold tax free if they are held for the minimum required time of one year after date of vesting. These are called Incentive Stock Options, or ISO's. Options in excess of $100,000 a year are called NQ's, or non-qualified, because they don't qualify for the tax benefit. Read more about the IRS code at Findlaw.

Go with the short.

I hope you read up a little more on short selling. You my actually make some money some day, if you ever have the credit or collateral to do so.

EBITDA - that's definitely not a useful metric in this case. You can't ignore all the asset acquisition and financing mistakes a company has made. Please see this link before basing any company's health on EBITDA. If EBITDA is a good number, all it can mean is that normal core operations is doing fine but doesn't say how well the company managed it's resources to get there.

Even American investors are starting to ignore that number and opting for a more complete financial picture.

This was a profit using GAAP not pro forma results. You don't get to write off a $10 billion factory in one year.

Times are tough. This is just an example of zero based budgeting. There is nothing here that claims that Dell says "Linux is a bad operating system." They just made a decision that with limited resources, they would get better return on their investment by supporting other products.

Too often, when an announcement like this comes out, the slashdot community starts crying foul and looking for Microsoft conspiracies. Dell will start shipping Linux based laptops and desktops when they think they can make money doing so, or when business improves to the point that they can afford to take more chances.