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"The Word" from E*Trade About the RH IPO
"You must reconfirm your conditional offer," Johnson said. To do this, you log into your E*Trade account, click on "Account Services," then "Other Questions," and click on "e-mail" to send an automatic e-mail reconfirming your offer. You can do this at any time, but Johnson advises "...doing it as soon as possible. The stock is being priced today."
Another alternative, Johnson, said, was to wait. As soon as Red Hat sets its final offering price - Johnson said, "I think it has been set at $14 per share" - E*Trade will send e-mail to everyone who has opened an E*Trade account and has money in it earmarked to buy Red Hat shares. This is the one that could come out during any two-hour period, any time. If you haven't reconfirmed already or don't do so immediately, you may want to check your e-mail hourly.
One big catch: if you only have $1000 or $1200 in your E*Trade account earmarked for Red Hat stock purchases, you need to send more. NOW! As in wire it, in accordance with the instructions on the E*Trade site. Otherwise you will not get any stock, according to Johnson.
Important Disclaimer: Please remember that Slashdot is not in the business of distributing investment news, and that things can change rapidly on the day a company does its IPO. If you have a direct financial interest in the Red Hat IPO, you should contact E*Trade directly for exact instructions and the latest news instead of getting your information from Slashdot. - Roblimo READ THIS OK, here's the deal. The official letter from E*Trade was sent, but it contains the wrong info as to how to confirm. Go in to the Account Services, and they say click on Other Questions at the bottom of page. It's not there-instead click on e-mail us on the right navbar. Inside of there, choose the other option, rather then a pre-set option, and it will take you to yet another page. From there, click on e-mail us. That should do it.
There have been about a hundered comments explaining the lottery system, why don't you read them.
Seriously, you can trade in RHAT right now. However, only a market order is likely to work, limits may not fire.
Will in Seattle
--
.-.--
Nope.
[
applied under the DIRECTED SHARES PROGRAM (ie had the LETTER)
They fixed that, but it still fails sometimes (about every 3 months). And right now it will only allow me to concect at 9600 - at night if I'm lucky (about 10% of the time) I get 28800, but during the day and evening forget it.
So, if you have a spam-filter too, check first whether the mail hasn't been filtered by it
Well, it went big, but all I got was three messages saying I didn't get shares allocated.
No loss, but no gain.
Maybe next time they'll allocate more to e*trade...
All the technology in the world won't hide your lack of vision, talent, or understanding.
Okay, now sell immediately for a 200 percent plus gain! (So I can buy it for cheap!)
Gaaarrggh!! ditto here. Then the e-trade bot says to me:
RE: Public Offering Order RHAT. We were unable to allocate shares. Possible reasons: Offering priced above limit or high demand for shares.
I'm so sick of this, I'm almost glab it's over. I've never had anybody try so hard to screw me. Thanks for trying to do the right thing, Red Hat. I'll try not to be too bitter, although it makes me wanna cry that it's up over 200% right now.
I just got this alert:
Subject: E*TRADE Account Alert
ID XXXXXX Acct.no.: XXXX-XXXX RE:
Public Offering Order 1100 RHAT We w
ere unable to allocate shares. Poss
ible reasons: Offering priced abovelimi
t or high demand for shares. 0000
I had jumped through the hoops (re-submitted this morning) and had the $$$ in the account, so they must've gone to the lottery.
...that they still have NOT run the directed shares allocation, they expect to later on (maybe not today, though) and are still accepting directed share conditional orders.
Same here
same for me ! got 0 out of my 600 non invitee program :-((( [though I did do everything, monitor the pages, etc... I had hoped the 15 min windows this morning meant at least those making it would get at least 100 shares.. but sadly, not even !] I wonder if asking for 100 I would have got them... I'm still waiting the result for the invitee part... I hope that one will work out ok !!
Should have, but too late. Oh well, from what I hear, it went to lottery anyway.
I was able to get in at 9:30 Pacific time. You will have to supply info from the invitation.
I feel humbled by this--if I do indeed make money from this, I will be generous to the Free Software Foundation.
Don't send this jerk any of your money.
Of course you don't. Moderators, please remove this crap, and people, don't listen to this guy.
BULLSHIT.
What a load of crap. You're just mad you didn't get any shares. (Neither did I.)
August 11, 1999 1:17:25 PM ET
Subject: Public Offering Order for RHAT
RE: Public Offering Order RHAT. We were unable to allocate shares. Possible reasons: Offering priced above limit or high demand for shares.
Oh well, guess I'll put my 1999 IRA contributions into mutual funds instead of Redhat....
Were you affinity or friends&family or other?
(I didn't get any of my shares; i was affinity)
[
There have been about a hundered comments explaining the lottery system, why don't you read them.
The math works out thusly:
Note that this information comes from E*Trade's website, as well as the invitation letter. If the shares are allocated round-robin, as they purport on their website, then everyone who wanted them within the DSP program should have some at $14.
GStreamer - The only way to stream!
That's what my Datek account says anyway. That's
a big big big gain for all you lucky sods you
got in early. I can see some heavy selling at the
moment so it drop off a bit.
High is $50, low is $40 on over 6 million shares
traded.
Good luck out there you guys -- Conor..
We live in a wierd society where we tax capital gains at a lower rate than labor gains.
Gimme a break. I see things go completely wacko with the telephone system on a fairly regular basis. In LA (310) I have OFTEN gotten "All circuits are busy" messages, and any natural disaster - whether it touches the phone system or not - causes such flurry of calls that no one gets through.
If a busy resource is downtime on the 'Net, it certainly is downtime for the telephone as well!
And both networks rely on the power grid, which even in a city like New York (or LA) is not as reliable as you'd think..
But I can't say that I'm losing any sleep over carpet-bagging latecomers to the game getting bit by not understanding how the whole mess works.
E-bay just sucks.
Expanding a vast wasteland since 1996.
The email alert that E*TRADE said it would send out if the price changed appeared to have NOT been sent.
/. and my own double-checking I still might have missed the boat. Blah. E*TRADE. Blah.
Very irritated at this. If it wasn't for
I placed my indication of interest through E*Trade for 300 shares (no limit) during the original two-hour window, made sure I had sufficient cash in the account to cover it up to $14, reconfirmed my indication of interest this morning during the brief time they were accepting same, and still ended up with zero shares.
What I'd like to know is specifically how the shares were allocated:
Was it based partially on a percentage of the number of shares requested? If so would I have been better off requesting 30,000 shares instead of 300?
Was it based on prior participation in IPOs through E*Trade. This is my first IPO with them, so it'd be interesting to find out the correlation for those who were allocated shares.
How long you've had an account with E*Trade definitely did not play into it, as I've had an account there since shortly after they opened.
If you went through E*Trade and did receive shares, please share information on your indication of interest and E*Trade account history with us.
For those of us not connected in some fashion this whole thing looks to have been a large waste of time.
Snowdog
Yes, but we still don't have the shares in our accounts. This will happen later today. By then, it may just have dropped to $20 or lower :-(
I just called E*Trade to re-submit my conditional offer, and was told yet again that this is not a "normal" IPO, whatever that means. The guy I was talking to said that the opening to resubmit the conditional offer had just closed (this maybe 20 minutes after it showed up on the site). Supposedly (at least from this guy) the 2hr window has nothing to do with what's happening right now. Paraphrasing him: "If you're not in now, you're not in." Whatever. I'm in.
GStreamer - The only way to stream!
Easy on the moderation triggers dudes. It was just a joke. BTW: It's pretty sad that so many people are SO desperate to make craploads of money off of Redhat and Linux that they even COULD fall for such an obvious ploy. Relax people.
Me too. Smart Alert Message 1:18:44 PM ET.
Subject: Public Offering Order for RHAT
RE: Public Offering Order RHAT. We were unable to allocate shares. Possible reasons: Offering priced above limit or high demand for shares.
My limit was $14.25, order entered 07:51 this morning for 1200 shares by e-trade representive M____ A_____ (poor guy doesn't deserve to get slashdotted. Yet.)
My first guess is they screwed up the directed-shares bit.
I just got a personal phone call. This is a nice gesture, but email would have been nicer.
[
THIS IS A SCAM _ DO NOT SEND ANY MONEY
I have dealt with etrade in the past on IPOs - this is not required. This guy is scamming you !!!!
Mellow out, Dax. AFAIK, it just means that enough people re-indicated interest that they now know they cannot give everyone the shares they asked for. Now they go to their allocation algorithm.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
That's really cool. Now I just need to get a lot of money! Maybe I could use what I earned purchasing M$ stock years ago... ;-)
BTW, First Post!
this needs to be moderated waaaaaay up......that poll would be very intersting:
I got the letter and the shares
I got the shares but no letter
I got the letter but no shares (tried)
I got the letter but no shares (didn't try)
I went blind reading 'letter' postings
I drink to make other people more interesting
As someone already said: "This is actually RHAT's fault since they chose to reprice; etrade is just the lucky company to piss off potential customers." Most of the seemingly evil ruckus on E*trade's end is a result of the Hat's last-minute price jack-up, the purpose of which jack-up, it seems to me (admitted cynic and anoncow), was to wedge out all you IPO-inexperienced OSS guys who trusted your "friends" at the Hat who said you only had to scrape together $1200 max to get in on this. E*trade wants your money. They even (pretty much) encouraged you to lie on your (re-)applications so they could get it. RHat already has your code.
I got the letter, but haven't gotten the shares yet :-(
Heh. Nice to see you again; haven't seen you much since early dancing-Makefiles alpha on linux-kernel.
It could be that I was getting special treatment, but it was some random chirpy customer rep, not any of my contacts in E*Trade. So I doubt it.
I also didn't get shares. None. At all. So if they were trying to avoid bad press, they stumbled a bit.
[
I believe I was the first one to post quote information, and I double checked Yahoo's delayed quotes before I posted. I don't think you need to report any of us. :)
lazy Mossmann
The new conditional offer on E*Trade lasted about 20 minutes. E*Trade says RHAT priced at $14/share and only those who placed new conditional offers are eligible. I'd also like to point out that I got my account alert saying that the new offer was available *after* they were no longer accepting conditional offers. Luckily I had already placed a new offer at that point. But it still pisses me off.
Please *please* phone E*Trade and talk to a broker yourself to confirm. Mention the affinity program. I wouldn't trust email in a volatile and fast-moving situation like this.
[
So now that Linux businesses are going public, will Slashdot have stock quotes? :) The Slashquotes.....
~afniv
"Man könnte froh sein, wenn die Luft so rein wäre wie das Bier"
~afniv
"Man könnte froh sein, wenn die Luft so rein wäre wie das Bier"
Richard von Weizs
I get to the point where it says click on "other questions". I don't have that anywhere on my screen under account services. Etrade sends you these emails saying you will might have to reindicate interest, but keeps it a secret when or how.
I too was disheartened to get the dear john on the allocation. However, I just got off the phone with E*TRADE. They fucked up the Directed Shares Program allocation. You were sent the notification of no shares in error. They are working to fix this, and should know definitely whether or not you get shares later.
You will probably be able to get the shares that you initially requested. E-Trade is probably holding a number of shares for this, and will make things right.
Obviously, they were very poorly equipped to handle something like this. I wish RHAT had chosen to go about this in a diferent manner. An initial private placement or issuing options (the right to be at a certain price) seems like it would have been easier for all parties concerned.
I am pretty positive that E-Trade has held on to a number of shares and is going to sort through this hole mess. In the future, do not do any of your *real* investing through an on-line broker. Pay the extra commision and establish a relationship with a full-service broker.
When I signed up and indicated interest, I told them, buy as many shares as I have money for at whatever the IPO price is. They STILL made is "reindicate interest" And they made you say yes when they asked, "Do you realize that your indication of interest is not a gaurantee you will receive any stocks at the IPO price". If that isn't a gaping loophole, I don't know what is. E*Trade is trying to pull a fast one. The more of US they screw out of our legitimate shares, the more they get to keep for themselves. The fucking bastards. All I can say is, we better keep a REALLY tight eye on them, and make sure we know exactly how those RHAT "affinity" shares were allocated. We know HOW many were set aside for us, and we know approximately how many of us were able to take advantage of the offer, so if ALL of us who ordered stock didn't get as much as we ordered, Im going to raise a holy stink.
Is that one of those American Motor's car like the Gremlin?
Had an interesting experience:
Punched up my E*Trade account this morning to submit a new conditional offer, entered an offer for 300 shares. Around 12:20 received a notice that I had been allocated 100 shares. Okay, so some is better than none. Watched the stock open and start bouncing around.
Then, about an hour later, got a call from an E*Trade rep to confirm my buy order! I had an outstanding buy offer of 100 shares at an opening price of $14, and did I want to confirm or cancel the order?
Well, gosh, by this time the stock price was around 44 in my quote window, and my Account Positions screen claimed that I already owned 100 shares. I said (a little nervously) that I thought I had already confirmed the order, and could he please double-check for me? So he checked on his monitor and confirmed that 100 shares were in my account and I was all set. Then he apologized and explained that the SEC was making them reconfirm all of that morning's conditional offers. He was using a list of buyers that had been printed before the stock went on the market, so some people on the list had already confirmed their orders online.
The interesting thing was that even though the stock was open and on the market, they were still confirming conditional offers that were made at the opening price of $14. As far as I know, that guy's still calling people.
I was one of the invitees, and as of 3pm EST,
ETrade is still saying "hang in there... we
haven't allocated the shares yet..." even though
it's been trading for 3 hours now.
I'm not cut out for this suspense...
Can you say Caldera?! Can you say Ameritrade?!
Complaining to the SEC that it was hard to get into an IPO? It IS hard to get into an IPO. There ARE limited shares. They move FAST. There is NEVER a guarantee. Hello? This is not "Etrade's evil empire"...it's called investing
Well, it doesn't really matter how much E*Trade screwed up because they ended up using the lottery process anyway due to such high demand for the stock. I was legitimately "in" but didn't get any shares because my name wasn't drawn out of E*Trade's hat. Oh well, such is the market.
I, too, am rather frustrated by all of this
--
.-.--
By the pure concepts of laisez fair capitalism, the system IPOs is clean. But under a market such as what we have with the SEC governance, what you all are now experiencing is called "The Fleecing of the Lambs." It is how market insiders and big-timers get your money. Only after it bites you do people seem to care. You won't hear Red Hat complaining. You won't hear eTrade complaining. You won't hear the market institutions complaining. This has been going on for years. So why does the SEC ignore it? When you find out, the cliche of the sausage factory will seem tame. Welcome to the way of doing business on Internet Time!
Although they may have tripled in price so far today, Red Hat has fallen well short of original expectations of hitting the $100 barrier. Its doesn't look like it'll happen either since its been floundering around the $45 price point. They had better start making some big announcements if they want to hit $100.
Oh and I forgot to add that if you DO send money, some guy I picked out of the phone book will be a very happy man (or woman I guess). "L.Lee" in Buffalo, you lucky duck! ROTFLMAOATEOPSDE (roll on the floor laughing my ass off at the expense of paranoid slash-dotters everywhere)
Given the confusion, lack of information, and vague/conflicting instructions, you would have thought that this was put together by the same people who write the Linux HowTo's.
Well, I just got notified that they were not able to allocate me any shares :(
I wonder how many people had the opertunity to participate in the redhat deffered shares problem. Obviously over eight thousand... Would be interesting if someone had an indication as to how many had the chance to participate.
If you were one of the lucky ones, congratulations.. Oh well, guess I'll wait a few days for it to drop down and buy it anyway.
Slashdot, would a spell-checker for posting be too much to ask? It's not rocket science!
Hey you can get free realtime quotes Here You have to register and click through a few pages of legal crap, but hey it's free. Also I don't know if this was just me, but I had to click the 'Sign Up' button after I had already signed up to actully get to see the quotes.
me too
Did anyone in the affinity program get shares?
Seems like a lot of people got the reject notice
at one.
I was pissed enough that I had to decrease my number of shares ordered because of the last minute price increase...
I got the e-mail alerts. I even re-registered my conditional offer. After the stock began trading I received another alert saying my 300 shares couldn't be allocated because demand for shares was too high. Remember, it's not the little guy who flips stocks, it's the institutional investor. If RHAT plummets in the next few days you'll know who to blame.
$55-1/16 A SHARE?!
What utter and total bullshit. Bob Young's laughing all the way to the bank. Sure, maybe you made some cash too, but let's do the math.
6 million overinflated overrated shares of RHAT starting at $12 each. That's $72mil. Now they're at $55. That's $3.3 *BILLION* IN STOCK if I'm reading all these zeros correctly.
When will you FOOLS get this through your head? It doesn't matter if RedHat does or doesn't give back the community! You just made Bob Young and Co. $2.58 billion! And what happens when people start realizing that RedHat *ISN'T* worth $2.58bil under *ANY* circumstances?
Give me a break; RedHat's pulled a fast one, people fell for it, and in the end, they're going to get screwed. Never before have I seen such blatant lying in an IPO, or such idiocy from the public. Excuse me, I'm going to be ill.
-RISCy Business | Rabid System Administrator and BOFH
your company here.
shelby != ford
Isn't it interesting how 7.3 million shares have already traded when there were only 6 million in the IPO? There's a lot of flipping going on. If you're interested in picking up these (and you got screwed out of the IPO), just wait a while and they'll probably cool down a bit...
Intel already owns 4% of RedHat. The big guys get in early. I simply love watching technoids discuss Wall Street.
Emotional buy or not, unless you're day-trading and familiar with the risks involved (and have a real job), don't buy an IPO.
Carry on.
Consigned to flames of woe.
You forgot what happened to me, and many others here:
I got no letter and no shares.
For more information, click here.
E*Trade told me that I still have 3 days to get enough money into them to cover my offer at the new $14 price. I'm one of the "chosen" -- don't know if that matters. Also, by the way, I'm told by them that talking to one of their brokers does NOT incur fee in this situation. Also, I was confirmed that no they do not yet accept credit card payments... WIRE IT! Share Trade has it @ $46/share... ya! What a ride!
My first guess is they screwed up the directed-shares bit.
While I see it as very likely that they screwed up, I'm thinking that the directed shares went to the lottery process because of high demand. The documentation on the site stated that this might happen, but I guess we can never really know with such terse alerts coming from E*Trade.
--
.-.--
Well it took them a little bit of time but they're updating the RHAT stock now. It's 15 minutes delayed natch...
Click for RHAT quote
... working a bug in the capitalist system.
:)
No problem, see, because we are the people who build things. You just lean on them. Next we'll build some Dutch Auctions and open IPO processes, and that particular capitalism bug will evaporate.
Deep down, I really don't mind making you rich as a side effect of getting to live in the open source world I want to live in. But it is a bug, and we will fix it.
BTW, Rob Malda's probably made more from open source than you have. And he knows how to throw a better party.
They had to go to a lottery system for affinity shares meaning if you got anything, you got 100 shares. So more like $2,800 profit. Not bad I suppose.
Gordon
Hey, I live in Hawaii and the time frame to re-indicate your interest occurred very early in the morning. I got up before 6:00 am and the game was already over. SO...in the slashdot member tradition, I will be sueing God for revolving the earth to create time zones and I am trying to see if I can hack his network.
What does this mean to YOU? Red Hat allocated 800K shares and sent out 8K e-mails. E-trade allocates 100 shares each, then parcels out the leftovers. That means that affinity program members are guaranteed to get at least 100 shares each. You will get them at the initial offering price of $14, regardless of what they're selling for right now (and anybody who watches IPOs can also guarantee you that, while tomorrow's price may not be as high as today's peak, it's not going to be $9 unless the Red Hat prez pulls an Eagle Computer).
So stop whining, kiddies.
Oh, P.S. Never heard of Eagle? 10 or 20 years ago they celebrated a super-successful IPO. The president had a lot of champagne, got into his shiny new sports car, and drove into a tree. The company didn't do too well after that. :-(
The point was that this was an offer to OpenSource developers to reward them for their support of RedHat, NOT AN OFFER to people who had $100s of thousands of dollars to invest. YES, etrade WAS supposed to bend over backwards to help us. That was the whole point of letting the OpenSource community in on the IPO. The made us go through considerable time and expense to get our money there on time, then go through a very complicated conditional offer that WAS SUPPOSED to ensure the trade would go through (you could have set you limit offer at $20 as some people) only to have all conditional offers canceled and get a 15 minute window for which the email went out after the window had already closed. Sounds like someone got greedy and decided to screw the OpenSource community over. Count me in on the class action suit.
If you get IPO shares and flip them in less than 30 days, your broker will probably not let you in on future IPOs (unless you have a super-phat account with them).
cpeterso
I can't believe this. I jump thru every hoop, dotted every i, crossed every t. I was told by two different brokers I was in.
Then, after the stock was trading in the 40s, I called Etrade to confirm I had RHAT. They said, sorry, we are still allocating the stock. We won't be able to tell you until later. What!?!?! Waiting until after the stock goes up three fold the allocate? That means if RHAT goes up, allocate it to friends. If RHAT goes down, allocate to suckers.
Then I find out that I didn't get my allocation. I'm pissed.
This is utter Bullshit.
Quack
Red Hat has carved out an excellent brand name and has a pretty good product. The upside potential is enourmous: Microsoft is worth almost 500 billion dollars. If Red Hat, with a more efficient business model that Mr. Gates' extortion racket, can become 1/10 the market capitalization of Microsoft (50 billion) dollars, then the price of Red Hat should go to near 1000 dollars. Since Linux is going to destroy Microsoft, I'd hang on to the shares.
Hello,
I remember a while back (I can't find the link now) there was a web page detailing the ordeal with etrade and this redhat fiasco. I am very pissed off right now and i would like to get something done. I rember the web page had a lot of info on it. I think that this IPO has been handled so poorly that it is laughable.
Douglas Calvert
Bob Young holds 9.1 million shares, making his share worth around $400 million.
The largest share holder of the company (22.5%) is actually Frank Batten Jr. (chairman of Lexmark Communications) who holds 15 million shares for a value of around $660 million
I want to know, did anyone actually get any shares, or are the reports I'm seeing about the DSP shares not being allocated at all correct?
GStreamer - The only way to stream!
... because they are getting $70 million and the insiders get $200 million of "money on the table".
Has anyone here actually called E*TRADE? Two of my DS friends have and both were told that the directed share allocation hasn't happened yet and that they're still taking orders/reconfirmations for directed shares folks.
It's my bet, then, that all the rejection notices that DS people got are bogus, probably because parts of E*TRADE's computer system don't distinguish between DSers and non-DSers.
Date: Wed, 11 Aug 1999 07:28:55 -0700- ----------------------------
- ----------------------------
From: #IPO
Subject: RHAT IPO Update
-----------------------------DO NOT REPLY TO THIS
EMAIL------------------------------------------
----
"Important Notice to Participants in the RedHat Affinity
Offering"
The offering price for the RedHat initial public offering
has been set at $14 per share. This is outside the original $10-$12
expected price range for the offering. BECAUSE THE OFFERING HAS PRICED
OUTSIDE THE EXPECTED PRICE RANGE, YOU MUST RECONFIRM YOUR PREVIOUSLY
TRANSMITTED CONDITIONAL OFFER IN RESPONSE TO THIS ACCOUNT ALERT IN ORDER TO
PARTICIPATE IN THIS OFFERING.
To reconfirm your conditional offer:
* Log into your E*TRADE account and click on the ACCOUNT SERVICES tab.
* Click on OTHER QUESTIONS at the bottom of the page. Click on e-mail
in this sentence:
* Send us an email from there with the following subject line: RED HAT
IPO CONFIRM
We understand that some affinity purchasers will not have
the opportunity to reconfirm their conditional offers immediately after
pricing. As a result, we will provide affinity purchasers with a period
after pricing during which you may reconfirm your previously transmitted
conditional offer.
-----------------------------DO NOT REPLY TO THIS
EMAIL------------------------------------------
-----------
I called the super-secret special directed shares number, punched in my pin, and was informed that the initial "no shares allocated message" *was in error*. They haven't done the directed shares allocations yet. So don't panic just yet!
[
Gee. I got mine at 10:30. It had the same originating timestamp as yours, +- a few seconds. And here's the cool part: the Alert didn't show up until the mail did. WTF? Obviously the Alert is somehow tied to the Exchange server in question (which is a pile of crap, as we all know). Is that stupid, or did the universe just invert?
GStreamer - The only way to stream!
Whatever, man. Hasn't school started yet? The principal is probably looking for you.
This IPO puts a bad taste in my mouth. Anyone want to start an Anti-Linux Linux distribution?
OK, Slashdotters, time to get our shares back.
If everyone who DID NOT get the shares through E*Trade complains, the Securities and Exchange Commission has to investigate it.
So, http://www.sec.gov/ is the place to go.
Don't let E*Trade scare you off by mumbo jumbo.
Will in Seattle
Linux supporters...
champions of Open Source...
supporters of the GPL...
...Flipping RHAT, selling off your stake in a major milestone (good or bad, this is yet to be determined) within the Linux community.
For what? A few $$$? A lot of $$$? So some stodgy guy in a pinstriped business suit can determine the fate of what might very well be the prototype for future free-software based corporations?
"Yeah, I believe that software should be free. But nevermind that, now that I've made my loads of cash, I don't care about the principles."
Sellouts. Yeah, I guess that's an all too-common term, anymore. But it still stands. If you stand by your principles, then support it by holding onto your stock and having a stake, a true voice in what happens at the company.
If Linux advocates everywhere go on and sell their RHAT shares, wouldn't that be an indication of the true direction of the movement? If you dump your shares, you're dumping your voice, with regards to the future of free software. If you sell out your IPO offers for cash, how can anyone expect to believe that you won't sell out the future of free software?
Granted, this message isn't directed to all of you. Those of you who hold on to your shares, that you might have some voice in the goings-on at RHAT, I applaud you. The rest of you are nothing but flaming hypocrites who don't deserve any say in the future of Linux or free software in the first place.
Did that, and despite being in the "Affinity" program (e.g. I received The Letter) and wanting merely 100 shares, I didn't get any.
Did anyone placing a conditional offer through E*Trade *without* The Letter get any shares? If so, WHY?! -rt
I am hacked!
kmj
The only reason I keep my ms-dos partition is so I can mount it like the b*tch it is.
kmj
The only reason I keep my ms-dos partition is so I can mount it like the b*tch it is.
Just pulled up a quote on RHAT and it reports that 8,633,800 shares have changed hands. Let's see, 6,000,000 were being offered plus 800,000 for the directed shares program. That sure is a lot of stock changing hands in a scant 45 minute window.
Gordon
I had more than $51,000 in my account, and they didn't even phone me. I came in to work at 9 AM today and there was a message when I logged in to my account. They didn't phone me at home, at work, or on my cell phone, nor did I receive any email.
It's a good thing the larger account is with another broker, or I'd have no shares at all. There I just phoned, said I wanted to buy up to $100,000 of it, and that was it.
I will make sure I tell all my relatives and friends to stay away from E*Trade. After me phoning a broker yesterday and confirming ON THE PHONE while the recording tone bleeped that I wanted the shares in the $12 to $14 range, this is not acceptable behaviour.
And no, the account messages were NOT clear.
Will in Seattle
This was nothing but a thinly veiled publicity stunt by RedHat and Goldman Sachs to buoy the price of the RedHat IPO. Let's look at the facts: - After giving us a few days to get our money over to E*TRADE and then going through a complicated conditional offering procedure (where we could have set a limit price of $20.00 or higher on the offer), at the very last minute, fifteen minutes before the stock is to go public, RedHat re-prices their stock at $14.00 and throws out all pre-existing conditional offers. We get an email saying we can re-affirm our offer at the new price. But this email didn't go out until the conditional offer had already closed. Some people were reloading their browser in their E*TRADE accounts every few minutes and actually got the alert within the window, only to be denied purchase of shares. This included people with hundreds of thousands of dollars as well as small peyons. RedHat knew what the demand would be back on August 4 when the Conditional Offer closed. They could have warned us all then that demand from the OpenSource community was much greater than was anticipiated, and they could have re-priced the offering appropriate (more like $25.00 than $14.00 with a lottery.) But they didn't. And in the process they excluded over 90% of the OpenSource community that wasted their time wiring their money to E*TRADE and then going through a ridiculously complicated procedure to make a conditional offering. Who makes the money? THe insitutional investors, like Goldman Sachs, that bought RedHat this morning for $14.00 and are now flipping it in small chunks at $50.00 or higher to the millets that buy anything labeled an IPO. They've got the monopoly, they are allowed to flip (WE WERE TOLD NOT TO SELL FOR 30 DAYS), they make the money, they screw the rest of us. The only reason RedHat had for emailing thousands of us in an offer we were never intended to participate in was to create demand for their IPO at the prices the institutional investors chose ($50.00) rather than $14.00. A tiny fraction of you did luck out and made money off this, but they had to let some people in for show. This was nothing but a big publicity stunt.
It is funny how I thought when getting that fatefull email that I was being given something, but this has been a lot of work. I sure hope I get some damn shares.
Actually, there is a way to hedge your gains without risking your good standing with E*Trade: a stop order. This is a sell order which only gets conditionnally executed if RHAT stays above a certain limit (say $45). If the order doesn't get executed (even if submitted), then E*Trade won't penalize you (at least that's what they told me, so take this with a grain of salt).
So there are two possible outcomes:
Just one word of advice: leave a sufficient difference between your stop price and the current market price, or your order might be triggered "accidentally" by a momentary fluctuation.
LOL :) Very good point.
There have been about a hundered comments explaining the lottery system, why don't you read them.
There've been comments explaining the lottery system for directed shares, but what about those of us who went through E*Trade without having received a special invitation? (As discussed here.)
Snowdog
and cheap at the price ;-)
You're assuming that those 800,000 were just for people who get the letter. There are other people in the directed shares program, like redhat employees.
I've heard of a lot more than 5000 invitation. I'm still surprised to see so many "nothings" and so few "100".
Sounds like both the affinity program and the open market went to lottery (at least on E*Trade) and nobody got more than 100 shares.
Unless you have a $5mil account with G.S.
Which I doubt.
... and I have a bridge to sell you.
This always interestes me:
However, losses have accelerated in recent months as Red Hat has ramped up its
sales push. For the three-month period ended May 31, the company reported a net
loss of $2.1 million on $2.8 million in sales.
Based on the 66.8 million shares outstanding after the offering, Red Hat has
an estimated market value of about $2.96 billion.
Frank Batten Jr., chairman of privately held media company Landmark
Communications Inc., is the company's main shareholder with a 22.5% stake. The
15 million shares he owns are currently worth about $663.8 million.
The company's co-founders, current Chief Executive Robert Young and Chief
Technology Officer Marc Ewing, each own about 9.1 million shares, now valued at
around $402.7 million.
This certainly made quick millionaires of the guys in charge. What blows me away however is that a company with 2.8 million in revenues, now has a value of around 3 billion dollars!!
Do you think RHAT is over-valued... I know I would cetrainly hold off buying any right now!
got my 100 shares at 14. Sold 50 at 43 and change. Put a limit order to sell 25 of the remaining 50 if it ever hits 60. That leaves me almost 800 to share with the tax man (vote republican, eliminate the capital gains tax!) and some free shares. God Bless America.
Nonsense. It's happened plenty of times just in the weeks since RH announced plans to go public.
Anyone who hasn't spent the few minutes it would take to know that really has no business getting into something as speculative as an IPO.
Freedom's just another word for nothing left Zulus
If all those complaining about RH up-ing their share price would have studied up (oops, studying
is a bad word), then you would have realized that almost all hot IPOs become effective above their
initial range.
The reason for this is that if RH would have priced at $12, they would have gotten less money
out of the IPO (and more would have gone to the suits on wall street). Why shouldn't RH take
advantage of the hype and raise a few more bucks on this round of financing?
Who was supposed to be primary beneficiary of this IPO, the company or some hackers who were
too lazy to study up and research the process? RH the company benefits from up-ing the IPO price
and it's in their best interests (and probably in the best interests of most of their true "friends")
that they were able to raise more money in this round of financing to help them support more
Open Source projects.
Complaining just because you don't have a few more bucks in your pocket is whining. You lost out
because you were too lazy to study up, plain and simple. You are the same type of people who sue
others because you are unable to accept blame for your own stupidity.
The OS movement benefits more by having RH having more money to spend on OS projects than
you having more money to spend on yourself.
Having said all that, often directed share programs take up to 1 day to clear, so if you get
off your butt and call E*trade, you might just find that all you have to do is throw in a few
more bucks to get your shares. But from what I understand, it probably went to a lottery anyhow
so odds are that you just have to blame the dice or the Random number generator.
Wouldn't it be ironic if E*trade used an open source RNG (since most of them are) to pick the
lottery winners. Sweet justice... whiners blame open source for failure to get RHAT IPO shares.
Well, it opened to the secondary market- at a huge ass increase. It's running at around $43 a share, instead of the $14 per share IPO.
Does anyone who is an *affinity customer* (NOT everyone else, people who got the letter) actually have any shares of RHAT stock in their portfolio as a result of the affinity purchase program? I still haven't seen any shares. Close of market is in 20 minutes. I've talked with E-Trade three times today. Each time I've gotten a completely different story. In general, I think E-Trade really screwed the pooch on this. This is what should be an obvious business clue -- you just broght in a ton of people who are new customers, having their first experience doing business with your company. This is one of those times it would be nice to do things right and to be organized.
Yeah. I got in. I've only made $10 so far, but so what. I'm having fun.
Just now, 13:01 Eastern time, I talked to an e*trade rep about my DSP order. He says the DSP shares have not been allocated yet, that they will be allocated over the "next couple of days", and that e*trade will notify me by the alert mechanism. All you guys posting your allocation messages, this is very good to see, and I'll post mine when I get it, too. Please, please though, say whether you are in the Directed Shares Program or not.
I thought the magic letter would help, but now I wonder if the odds might have been better in the general E*Trade pool, rather than the directed shares pool?
Woulda been nice if they did the lottery on the directed shares first, then moved the "losers" to the general pool for a second chance.
I wonder how many letters they sent out... there were enough shares for 8,000 people to get 100 each in the program, and I would guess that a LOT lost out this morning during the reconfirmation thing... Huh. I guess asking Red Hat about the # of letters sent might prove interesting. Unless it was WAY above 8,000 I'd say that E*Trade did in fact screw something up.
I didn't get in either, oh well. What I would like to see is CmdrTaco put up a poll so we can see how many did.
Awesome!
You should have wired money in as soon as there was a price change.
Screw E*Trade? I say screw RedHat. They are at fault for going through E*Trade in the first place.
When I got the letter, I was very happy. I FedEx'd my application along with $90,000.00 to E-Trade the very next day.
My account was setup and I passed the eligibility test, and I indicated my interest in buying 9000 shares from that reserved "friends and family block of 800,000 shares all by July 22nd.
I got up today an hour before the market opened and found they priced it at $14. Fine, I called and re-confirmed my interest in 6,400 shares.
The stock started trading before us "friends and family" even knew what our share allocations were. About 45mins after the stock started trading I got an alert that said:
ID XXXXXX Acct.no.: XXXX-XXXX RE:
Public Offering Order 6400 RHAT We w
ere unable to allocate shares. Poss
ible reasons: Offering priced abovelimi
t or high demand for shares. 0000
In other words, the "letter" didn't mean squat (at least in my case). I played by the rules, I jumped through the E-Trade hoops, the stock is now trading at $47/share (3.3X the $14 offer price)
Oh well, I guess it is better to have lost an expected gain, then to have an actual loss.
If any of the press wants to talk to me, send me an email: dkelson@inconnect.com
E*Trade stated it is their "policy" not to wire back the funds unless they were orginally wired to the account in the first place. My funds where sent via FEDEX. They did not state a $20 fee was even an option, but hey, I'll call and ask. Thanks.
Actually the phone network - at least the central offices - does not rely on the power grid. They run off big banks of iron-alkaline cells floating on a recharger/load bus, and can keep the COs alive for days. Repeaters are powered from the COs.
If you have a coper pair between you and the switch, and don't have a PBX or other non phone-line-powered premisis equipment, your phone will keep working even though your city is dark. (I'm not sure how good the local tellcos are at battery-backing or CO-powering remote line concentrators, so a copper pair into your house isn't a guarantee.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I still haven't seen any shares. Close of market is in 20 minutes.
I've talked with E-Trade three times today. Each time I've gotten a completely different story.
In general, I think E-Trade really screwed the pooch on this. This is what should be an obvious business clue -- you just broght in a ton of people who are new customers, having their first experience doing business with your company. This is one of those times it would be nice to do things right and to be organized.
Rich guys screw the little guy. What's new?
E*Trade claims they have no way to determine if funds have cleared your bank or not. They are sticking to their "policy". Funny my bank with their dumb terminals knows E*Trade has had the funds since 8/1. I'm sticking with my full service brokerage from now on, E*Trade's service stinks. Every thing I've had to do has had to be done by phone anyway their website has never worked properly.
Ok. Here is a follow up. After reading more about people getting in late in the day I called Etrade back wanting to know "What the hell is up".
I was politely informed that I got bad information during the first call. Even though I mentioned I was part of the affinity program during the first call they gave me information that was only meant for generic etrade ipo purchasers *not* affinity members.
The gentleman on the phone handed me over to a broker who accepted my reconfirmation. I just got an alert from Etrade stating that they did process a buy order at $14. Yippie... I guess persistence counts for something.
Now Im just kicking myself for not having put enough extra in my account (I only sent 2500) so I could have purchased 200 shares at the increased price. (I just couldnt transfer money in fast enough)
--John C
Dont flame me now. I love the net just as much as the next guy. But this network is one big pile of copper and fiber thrown together as need be, and patched up to "work" most of the times. When I see people complaining that they did not receive alerts fast enough or yadi yadi yada, it just makes me think that they're lucky to have received it at all.
This is something that will have to be addressed soon. Telco's are expected to offer near 100% uptime (When was the last time the phone went down except when a natural disaster ripped the network to shred) ? But we see sites handling ungodly amount of money go down all the time. (E-bay anyone ?)
Then, I chuckle. The net is paying back all those who invaded it to make a quick buck. And I go back to sleep thinking that it all balances.
Point is : You're using an unreliable-best-effort-network to conduct transaction. EXPECT these things to happen.
'nuff said.
Sun Tzu must have been running Linux...
- Hold out baits to entice the enemy. Feign disorder, and crush him. (Sun Tzu, The art of war)
Marriage is considered capital punishment for the theft of a goat in some third world countries...
I received 400 shares, out of 1400 ordered. Could have been better, but also could have been worse.
Many pricings for IPO stocks increase at the last minute. The pricing is driven by how much "intent to buy" there is.
I just spoke with the Red Hat IPO center at E*TRADE. If you got the "no shares for you!" message, this was a mistake. The directed shares have not yet been allocated. All the information the operator had was that they are in the process as we speak, but the alert message was in error.
--
Ian Peters
I feel so screwed over.
Fourteen goddamn minutes and I missed my chance to get in on the IPO I've been waiting a month for (and for which, incidently, I opened an E*Trade account in the first place). I can't believe they're going to get away with this kind of bulls***.
Anyway, I put in an offer for shares at $20, hoping to get some before the stock skyrockets. This is the last stock I'm using E*Trade for, though; those #*$&%# ain't getting another cent of my money.
I am *so* angry right now.
----
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
Yeah! I just got my 400 shares! Fastest $15,000 I ever made. I hope the other affinity members hung on and didn't cancel their accounts in disgust.
For those of you who have recently opened accounts at E-Trade and are generally unsatisfied with their service, it is a very simple process to transfer your account out of there.
:)
Once this whole debacle is sorted out, you would be well-served to call a full-service brokerage firm and have your account transferred over to a broker who you can deal with personally in the future.
The transfer will cost you no money (although to be honest, I have never dealt with E-Trade... they may have a small fee). All you have to do is sign a few forms, and your new broker handles everything.
... and if you want your new broker to be a fellow slashdotter, e-mail me
However, if it was the SEC... they might have a point. :)
Were you able to get the shares from the other broker at the offering price somehow?
Is this another on-line broker?
I hope one thing that people learn through this is to not invest on-line.... make sure that you are able to "talk" with someone when it comes to serious investing. If that money is important to you, you will pay the extra commision and develop a relationship with a full-servive broker.
I just went to the IPO section of E*Trade and found the folowing E*TRADE is now accepting new Conditional Offers in the Red Hat IPO. This issue has been priced at $14 and has been declared effective but minutes latter this was posted E*TRADE is no longer accepting new Conditional Offers in the Red Hat IPO. Now I am no expert at this but doesn't this seem like a rather short amount of time to have a conditional offer?
Also this means you will need to have $1400+ in your e-trade account to Get the inital 100 shares nessicary for an IPO offering. I would be realy PO off if I put $1200 in an E*Trade account only to find out that I needed $1400 to get in on the IPO. Not to mention the fact that the price was bumped the day of the IPO.
And it isn't e-trade and it isn't stockquotes.com
Slashdot -- "News for Nerds. Stuff that matters. Stock quotes all day."
Can we create a category and filter for stories about stocks? Please? This drags me down more than Jon Katz. Am I the only one?
I got 400 shares (out of 1400 ordered).
I see a lot of people (me included) who requested shares under the Affinity/Directed Shares/Red Hat sent you a letter group. None of us got anything. Did anybody who got the letter actually get shares?!?! Is there any way we can find out from E*Trade how many people got shares and how many didn't?
----
----
Open mind, insert foot.
I got the call after I'd gotten the email (AND called my broker). I'm reconfirmed @$14. But the shares haven't been bought yet, nor the money transferred. I asked about that and the fellow calling me said that they were still contacting people, and that the affinity shares were not allocated and would not be until some time later today. So if you're in the affinity program and haven't reconfirmed, you're not too late YET!
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
I'm sure there is come legal requirement for this, but it seems rather fucked.
-AJ
I called E*Trade, and the operator confirmed that the Affinity Program shares have not been distributed. She didn't know when they would, saying they'd get a message, and then we would.
All the technology in the world won't hide your lack of vision, talent, or understanding.
What analyst predicted $100? Most were say $30; it's well in excess of that!
BTW, It will go to $100 as Microsoft's market share crumbles!
Any discrepency between IPO price and first trading prices of this magnitude indicates strong public support for the company.
You must tell them this is you have received the letter from RedHat. Later, RayW forgot my password!
Hey do you think E*Trade would let me short their stock. I see a major drop in their share price coming. ;-)
However, if you use the telephone you get an acknowledgement when your transaction is completed (i.e., you talk to a human who confirms the order/change) -- with email you'll never know if e*trade received it.
Anybody know when trading is suppose to begin?
at least i will sleep tonight knowing that thousands of people don't consider me an asshole, like they will for you. i'm happy with my 100 share "lottery" win.
It works the SAME WAY. There are some shares reserved for "friends and family", they are the directed shares and you have to be invited. Then there are a few shares for peons who managed to check the web page at just the right times. Then there are millions of shares for etrade, GS, IBM and their golf buddies.
If there aren't enough shares for are the little people, and there aren't, it goes to lottery. What would you have them do, first come first served? Best ass kissers first? Alphabetical order?
Etrade is telling us that we need to "reconfirm" that yes we do want to buy "x" number of shares at "market value". I was going to tell you to go to Etrade's IPO Center and follow their "Go Now" link, but I just checked and it is now closed. I think the 2 hours is more like maybe an hour and a half at best. Thanks Etrade.
You signed up for 9,000 of 800,000 shares? That's 1-1/8% of the total "directed" offering! You greedy bastard... no wonder. :-)
Note: This is my lame attempt to introduce some levity into the situation. I seem to have also lost out on this deal. Ah well.
I heard a rumor closing the account was very difficult. I beleive whoever told me this mentioned they had to use a lawyer to get out of the account. I'm out of E*Trade just as soon as I can do it. I'd like to hear other's experiences... They've messed this up so badly I'm going somewhere else.
I get the "All circuits are busy" message also in Queens, NY (718). Growing up I always thought the phone companyies had a 100% connection rate, but I guess that was just marketing....
Are you sure?? When I placed a conditional offer, I set the maximum price I was willing to pay to $20 so that if the price did increase from the estimated $10-$12, I would still get the IPO.. Of course, that wasn't good enough...
Me too! I have 300 shares, but only enough in the account to cover 100. Not sure what's up, and etrade is closed. When I resummited over the phone after the re-price, I told the broker 100. I'm hoping I can wire in the money to cover the extra 200 before the order gets dropped.
Same thing for me -- I asked for 200 instead of 300 after the repricing, but got 300 but only have $4000 in the account (which doesn't seem to have been deducted yet for the purchase.) I had talked to them earlier to see if it would end up being on margin if I didn't have the cash and they said no, not for IPO's.
Now I'm trying to decide whether to call them and send a check tomorrow or just flip 50 shares to make up the difference...
The amount of misinformation coming out of e*trade is pretty amazing!
I never received the two alerts, so I was not able to re-submit my conditional offer. The alert should have been delivered to my email address and the address that goes to my pager, but I never got 'em. I called E-Trade and they said they were having a problem with their mail server.
First, it's bullshit that I should have to re-submit my conditional offer when I set the price at $15.
Second, because of E-Trade's incompetance, I never got the alert telling me I had to re-submit my condtional offer.
I thought I was incredibly lucky to be able to fill out a conditional offer in the first place. I took $1,500 out of my savings account so that I could buy 100 shares.
But I guess it was just a fucking joke.
Well, I set my pager up to page me when anything related to redhat happened on etrade's site. I was paged when they first wanted indications of interest, and got mine in, and I was paged again this morning when they were requesting again. Woke me up and got out of bed, even.
Got up, logged on, and confirmed my interest - yes, I would be happy to pay $14. About 5 minutes later, they cut off the confirmation service.
Head on into work, get into work, and logon and, check my account, to find out I didn't get any shares.
Ohwell, I'm not at all surprised this went to a lottery, but it is annoying, and a little depressing - Red Hat is a company I believe in. Maybe next time, I'll be one of the lucky ones.
I just got an alert saying that I need to reconfirm my order by 3:00EST friday and I'll get my allocation. This makes the 3rd time I've reconfirmed today.
The kicker is that it says that after they recieve my reconfirmation that the stocks will be in my account "within one day" of recieving my confirmation. Looks like I get to watch the stock fail some more before I get to take part.
btw this is apart of the affinity group of shares.
i am a customer service rep for one of those unnamed evil giant computer corps ... and when you spread one of our names, ext, and or email addresses you set us up for potentially having to change any or all of these to stop the flood of msgs ... several times here someone has had their ext given to say all of ford ... every ford rep on the planet left them a msg ... they had to change ext in order to stop the torent of msgs ... pls do not harrass this rep ... thank you
-
if knowledge is power, the internet is god - me again
If you have shares that you can't cover, if it's a significant amount you might consider going into a bank and getting a signature loan to cover it which would have a steep 10-20% interest rate, but might be worth the extra effort if it adds up to totaling more shares/cash than you would if you had to just give them back. Keep in mind, though, that if you cash out you'll be required to pay income tax on that income at the end of the year so you don't want to hang yourself out to dry. I think everyone got 400 shares that requested at least that much.
Call them. They called me at 1:30 CST (less than 2 hrs ago) to make sure I had submitted my indication of interest. You may still have time; call the IPO support line. That'd be more effective than complaining here. :-)
Nice cheer, but it won't get you anywhere unless you're planning to become some kind of geek-terrorist or something.
1) Red Hat had no control over what their underwriters did to "make the market".
2) E*Trade was subjected to the myriad SEC rules. They kindly explained that they had to follow SEC rules to the letter when the underwriters repriced the IPO last minute before trading started. This does happen, although not often. E*Trade would have been subject to severe penalties and litigation had they not followed the SEC rules to the letter. Remember that they are a public company with obligations to not be reckless themselves.
3) It sucks that many of us got elbowed out by those with the big bucks. The market is not a friendly place and those who trade in it for a living are smart people with as much experience trading as you and I have coding.
Perhaps your anger is best directed towards yourself for getting too anxious about "winning this bet".
As far as getting screwed: technogeeks are in demand if you haven't heard. "The Man" will pay you big (and I mean big) buck-o's for writing code. Programmers and engineers make 77% more than the average American. Keep it all in perspective.
--
Dare I ask? Did anyone get more than 100 shares?
I didn't get any shares (I didn't get the letter) and yes, it sucks that I wasted some time trying, but I generally don't blame E*Trade and especially not RH.
No, I don't understand why E*Trade made me refile my conditional offer when my initial offer was at a limit > $14, and I'd probably be pissed if instead of frequently reloading the IPO Center page this morning I had relied only on an alert that didn't show up in my account until after the window closed (it was open ~ 24 minutes).
But let's remember the laws of supply and demand. Obviously there was very high demand for this stock (holding at 47 as I write). If you're a regular shlump going through a place like E*Trade (i.e. not a high roller), the only time you're likely to get IPO shares is if it's not a very desirable stock.
Freedom's just another word for nothing left Zulus
You make some good points. I still thinkt the dorks are gonna rise up. Just you wait...
In the meantime, I gotta say - I know they were following rules, but the fact is they lied right to me about those rules 24 hours ago when I called to say "Is there any remote possibility that I will have to do anything more when this prices?" and they said "Absolutely not. Your offer is secure." I'm not saying they can be sued. I'm saying they did VERY VERY BAD BUSINESS.
Rat bastards.
Thank you for this timely info!
----
----
Open mind, insert foot.
The best part of the RH IPO, of course, is getting to see Rob quoted on ABC news.
Now that I am kicking myself for not getting
in on a piece of this redhat ipo action..
What other linux ipos are coming up or rumors
of ipos? I got some money to burn.. would
be nice to make a few bucks off it instead
of having it sit in an account.
Mike
I'm trading through my bank. I don't have enough money to risk to try to even bother with the 100 shares needed for an IPO. When is this daggon thing gonna open up so my broker can call me back saying I have X shares and spent $Y on them?
I'm not terribly experienced at this, can someone give me a quick rundown of when all of this junk happens?
CBS Marketwatch ... NEW YORK (CBS.MW) -- Shares of Red Hat nearly quadrupled on their debut Wednesday as the red-hot IPO added sizzle to the listless new-issue sector. The stock may be headed for a berth as the third biggest debut of the decade if it holds onto its gains.
Read the email account that you registered your E*TRADE account with. They sent out mail to "affinity" customers to tell you that you have another option. (Sending them email through their web interface can re-verify your order).
Now that I am kicking myself for not getting
in on a piece of this redhat ipo action..
What other linux ipos are coming up or rumors
of ipos? I got some money to burn.. would
be nice to make a few bucks off it instead
of having it sit in an account.
Mike
I can confirm this. I just talked to E*Trade and was told that, due to a big screw-up, everybody in the DSP was sent this notice, but that the DSP shares have *not* been allocated yet.
:-)
What a fiasco this has become. Hopefully VA will steer clear of E*Trade when they do their IPO. (But, despite all this, it sure would be nice if they did a community-DSP program too.
Brokers can still get affinity conditional offer requests in. All you need is the email address that was used for the affinity mailing.
I'm in the affinity program...
Yesterday afternoon, when I heard of the price change, I called in and changed my order to a limit order at $15 instead of a limit order at $14.
Apparently this wasn't enough to be considered a re-indication of interest! I also called in this morning to reconfirm my order and the broker never mentioned that I needed to indicate interest/confirm/whatever.
Here's the messages I received from E*Trade (which by default doesn't get delivered to your real email address!) The first came in at 11:52AM ET and the other at 10:10PM ET on the 10th.
Since I had a limit order at $15, I didn't see any need to 'change or cancel' -- This doesn't make sense -- why would they tell me I might want to cancel if I actually need to re-confirm in order to place the order? And when I got the second, I still had no indication that my reset of the limit order wasn't a reconfirm!I then heard through the rumor mill that I needed to contact them and specifically ask for a reconfirm/reindication -- I called the RHAT IPO hotline number (from the original affinity letter) and they accepted it, so I believe I'm still in.
(I also got a call less than an hour later from E*Trade asking me if I'd reindicated - it looks like they're on a phone campaign!)
Not impressed, overall, though...
I currently use Schwab (who I have no problems with except that the trades are pricey ($29.95)..) -- I'm considering changing to Datek for placing small orders.
E*Trade will not help you if you're not an affinity customer. I just spoke to three customer service reps -- the conversations went like
"The window was open approximately forty minutes, between 10:05AM EST, and 10:50AM EST."
I say, "Then why did I get an alert at 10:38 AM? Wouldn't you agree that's an unreasonable amount of time to notice, and react?"
"Well, sir,
"Yes, but was it too much to ask that you notify us more than 10 minutes before the offering closed? I'm extremely pissed off!"
"..."
As for the other, tiny IPOs, one was delayed, some scraped a respectable showing, others fell through the floor.
That only goes to show - Open Source -IS- superior to proprietary products, even amongst the suits.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
The letter denying you shares for DSP members is an automated error that was triggered when the initial offering price was raised to $14. This is the first time Etrade has had an offer it was underwriting raised at the last minute. Etrade's computers shot that out without them realizing it. They have not even begun to allocate the directed shares yet.
call Etrade. I'm told you have three days to wire the extra funds to cover your request.
By my calculations, A bit more than 2000 people got community distributed shares. So far I have seen several reports of people getting 400 shares. I believe this is the top # of shares distributed to individuals in this program. If we assume everybody placed orders for 400 or more shares, that means 800,000/400 = 2000 However, we also have to take into account that many people only placed orders for 100 shares. If everybody had only gotten 100 shares, this would leave room for 8000 people to have gotten shares. I am assuming on the low end for the percentage of people who were actually able to get the money in and qualify. At VERY least 2000 people got the Community Distribution. I would assume something more like 3,500. If you did not get it, through this or through regular IPO, do not be bitter. The market will still fluctuate. Anyways, most of these are SEC issues, not Redhat, not Etrade. The need to re-place your order today was SEC mandated! (Even though Etrade did some questionable things.)
Actually, I'm buying a house in January, so I might be cashing some in then if necessary to cover funds/furniture/lower monthly payments/etc...
:->
But I know you never said to do any damage to any website or business site, but who knows how angry some of these people are. At the minimum, I can just see the SEC getting the same verbal wrath poor near-sighted columnists have received by saying "Linux Sux, Windoze Roolz", you know, things that would make the whole lot of us look bad...
I don't blame you at all... perhaps commend you at pushing this cause. I must say that e-trade did drop the ball on it, but I was looking at it as that I sold my stock I had in e-trade last week in preparation for this...since then the stock dropped so far through the floor it's not funny.
So, even if I didn't get any RHAT, I'd still be ahead... I wasn't planning retirement on getting something I wasn't even guaranteed, but it sounds like some people were. I play the Big Game and PowerBall Lottery games sometimes, but I don't quit my job before the numbers are drawn...
Between the "blessing in disguise" and "pure luck" I have some "found money" to stash away for a "rainy day."
But really...at least buy some stock tomorrow at around noon or 1pm Eastern...If I didn't get in on the IPO, it what I was planning on doing, just would have bought less. I mean, if you think it might be 100 come year end, you'll double your money in 4 months
The stock market.. she's a funny lady that's for sure. In the 12 years I've been following it (since the 500+ point crash in October '87) I've been lucky to have a broker worry about getting me in on IPOs. This is the first one I've done alone, and most likely the last.
All the best and cheers... may all your IPO returns be big ones.
-m
> 1) Red Hat had no control over what their underwriters did to "make the market".
As you know, it is Red Hat who invited us to fly across many miles and join them for Thanksgiving. I appreciate the gesture. At the end of our journey, and once we arrived, they tell us that you are no longer allowed to attend, if you have problem with that, blame etrade, they are the once who took your seat and gave it to someone else. Could this ever make sense?
I'm a free software developer. Granted, I don't code for the benefit of Red Hat, I code for the benefit of my community and (above all) for myself. Red Hat has no obligation to entertain me, pay me money, or do anything for me. But if you make me take all my money from the bank, travel across the seas, to be there on time, do not tell me that I can no longer celebrate in the festivities. I relied on your invitation, it caused me a great deal of difficulties and expense to be there on time, the minimum you can now do is to make good on your hospitality.
I'm enraged. When a loved one screws me, I will sure find the way to get even. It is not that difficult.
Finally I got 400 shares (which was my initial IOI. I had later updated it to 500 though).
Sheesh. You can tell I do too much politics, right? Last night was endorsements for the county.
Seriously, though, email the Securities and Exchanges Commission at:
(West Coast) sanfrancisco@sec.gov
(rest of US) hey, look it up. On the http://www.sec.gov/ sight under "Frequently Asked Questions".
give your name, address, phone(s), email(s), broker, acct number, give details of who what where when, and tell them what you think should happen as a resolution. As in, that you get at least the 100 shares at the IPO price.
The more the merrier. Oh, and cc: your favorite newspapers and weeklies. Slashdot away!
Will in Seattle
You are right!! most of the shares were given to "important people" who have longstanding relationships with real live brokers... the broker I deal with put 5000 shares into my account without any of the bullshit you guys have gone through with e- trade.. I was asked a week or so ago if I wanted any.. said yes, asked how many shares, said 5000.. end of conversation.. Got a call tonight confirming 5000 @14 in my account.. There is a couple of lessons for you guys out there.. 1. e trade SUCKS BIG TIME. Not only do they screw you on everyday executions of your orders, but they really aren't thatresponsive to you as clients.. I know you guys are into computers, but sometimes computer programs simply don't have the flexibility to handle clients the way a human does!@!! 2. My broker just handed me a gift of 200 grand... There are a couple of rules... I can't flip it for a while. and I continue to give them my business... I am a professional money manager with 3 mil in personal accounts and about 25 mil under management. I trade moderatly and am not a pain in the ass.. THATS WHY I GOT THE GIFT!!! 3. I would suggest that you folks who have contributd to the success of the program consider setting up a program that rewards individuals for specific coding suggestions... The company could evaluate each and every code change for merit and then award stock as a reward.. Wouldn't cost the company anything, and it would make sure that those of you who so richly deserve something for your efforts are recognized monetarily for your contributions... Wallstreet is a place that takes care of its own FIRST... DIG IT... You guys are what makes this whole project work and deserve to be taken care of too!!! If the company has even one ounce of brains, it will get real creative and set up a program of rewards that will have you computer guys falling all over yourselves to improve the system... All without needing to hire and house the masses that Gates needs to support his shit!!!
Then, when Red Hat has the generosity to invite them to share in the wealth that Red Hat built from a bunch of inconsistent and incompatible software, they don't even bother to learn the rules of the game before jumping in. I can't believe the number of people who've complained about getting surprised. Hey, I wasn't an IPO expert either, but I had the good sense to watch other IPOs in the last week to find out what the pattern was like.
But even that childishness isn't enough. Noooo, the big day comes and things don't go quite according to plan (i.e., your wet dreams). Do people swallow hard, say "Shucks, I had my hopes up," and get on with their life? Not a chance. Wild talk follows of suing E-trade (didn't read that contract you signed, did you?), complaining to the SEC (because E-trade followed their rules!), and boycotting E-trade because alerts didn't arrive by e-mail (didn't read that disclaimer either, did we?).
The funniest (or saddest) thing is that Red Hat and E-trade are busting their butts to make sure we make a couple of bucks, even if it's at their expense. The e-mail last night came in at midnight EDT. Tonight's e-mail, informing me that I'll get my requested shares within a day of the confirmation I sent this morning, was sent at almost 10 PM EDT. (And BTW, you have until 3 PM EDT Friday to confirm. You can wait to see what the stock does and then take the plunge. Talk about a gift!)
Frankly, if I were still in the business world I'd be sorely tempted to make a list of all you self-centered cretins so that I could avoid ever having to deal with you. You don't have the faintest idea of how the world works, and rather than trouble your precious selves to learn, you fly off the handle at the first minor glitch and blame everybody else for your own ignorance.
Me, I'm pleased that I didn't buy shares at $14 and see them immediately drop to $3. I could have afforded it, but it would have been a disappointment. Instead, I am guaranteed that I have lost nothing, and I have an excellent shot at making a threefold after-tax profit. Every day on the stock market should be so good.
Sheesh.
Wow, this IPO has generated a LOT of comments. What other posts to /. (historically) have broken the 350 comment mark?
Now to see what Red Hat does with the publicity and money this is generating.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
when we are going to be able to purchase RHAT in the secondary market (post IPO)? Will it show up sometime later today, or tommorow morning, or will they draw this out another 4 weeks or so?
- when you devote enough time to gain something you become more and more willing to devote even more time (and money)
Thanks E*Trade!
Mine was also filled. Got 400 too (out of 400 or 500: I don't know. My initial order was 400, but I profited from confirmation to adjust it to 500).
How did you get it at $14?
I called them yesterday afternoon and talked to a broker (not just a rep) and reconfirmed at the $12-$14 price, even checking as to what would happen at $14, and got a green light then. And now they say I had to go through a web site? It was a BROKER and I DID PHONE.
Sigh. Maybe it's time to call up my brother and uncle (both lawyers) and ask them who they recommend.
Will in Seattle
Hey, they want you to go away. I say, why not complain to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) at http://www.sec.gov/ (look in FAQ) or email (west coast) sanfrancisco@sec.gov ?
They want you to take it lying down. They don't want the SEC, Salon, cNet, NYTimes, WSJournal, and other media sources to be contacted. Because then they might have to do the right thing.
Will in Seattle
I'm getting nervous now. I placed the order, the site said it was placed, but I decided to call E*TRADE anyway to verify it. They said on the phone that I failed the Customer Profile (which I definitely did not). I'm on hold as I type this.
I hope I get my shares.
For more information, click here.
Check your email. E*TRADE is giving "affinity" customers another option.
Hope you don't mind me piggy-backing on your score:3, Bruce. :-)
:-)
E*Trade just called me (1:30pm CST) and said that they were calling all the affinity program participants, to make sure that they had re-confirmed. She said that the message I got stating zero allocation was in error, and that allocated shares should show up by this afternoon...
Fingers crossed! Maybe I should have said "um... no!" and then upped it to 5000 shares.
Not just the Securities and Exchanges Commission at http://www.sec.gov/ (look for FAQ) (or email for the West Coast is sanfrancisco@sec.gov), but why not send email to the Salon, cNet, NYTimes, LATimes, SFChronicle, Washington Post, your local paper, any weeklies you get, and the venerable WSJournal?
They want you to gripe about it and go away.
Be polite about it in those letters, though.
Will in Seattle
I can't believe we were able to do all that in the 20 minute window. I wish they would post procedures somewhere so people don't get screwed when they don't realize they need to operate with a very real sense of urgency.
All this leads me to believe there is some real money that wanted in that RHAT and E*Trade didn't have the shares for. So they pulled this stunt to disqualify as many people as they could to make room for the Big Money(Tm).
Now I just hope the stock goes to 115 today! *smile*
Quack
I doubt you could have goten any shares anyway. Myself and many other people who were invited by redhat got nothing, just a line about how "they will distribute the freinds and family shares sometime". This was a huge pain in the ass. I have no idea who to blame and nothing to show for my effort. And i don't want to hear any crap about being greedy either, there is nothing wrong with making money. I do not think that by helping the community i deserve anything, but when you are invited to join in on an IPO there is nothing wrong with making money. I support redhat with full box versions even though i don't need them and have converted many people to linux. Funny how people will stone you for trying to make money, but its okay for redhat to make money off of us.
Per quicken.com news ...
- Jojo
The E*Trade rep I talked to said it was some sort of SEC regulation that they had to get a recofirmation. Anyone who got screwed should tell E*Trade that they are complaining to the SEC and then go and write a nice nastygram to the SEC.
They typically don't open an IPO to inexperienced traders?
Not to flame people here. I'm learning from this sequence of events too, but the amount of folks saying E*Trade sucks, let's hack their site and I'm getting screwed may be EXACTLY why they had the kind of tests in place that they did. Folks with big bucks and experience in trading probably
a) have been around long enough to understand the way these things work
and
b) won't feel screwed and start looking for revenge if they miss the window on this one specific equity.
Hope everyone gets rich though!
rw2
I got up this morning, checked slashdot, saw the notice, logged into etrade, saw the notice that redhat had been repriced requiring reconfirmation, followed by one that the window had closed. Tried to find out how to reconfirm, without success (and the slashdot mail was incomplete; later, at work, I had email that gave the specific line you had to include in the email for the auto-confirmation to work). While in the bathroom, etrade called on the phone telling me that I had to reconfirm, so I called in, waited on hold for 5-10 minutes. They asked if I was in the affinity group, and I said I was. I got passed to a broker, another 10 minutes or so on hold, the broker confirmed the email address the invitation had been sent to, and took the order. Later, I got the email that I had not been allocated any shares at all, despite following all the procedures. What really pisses me off is that my original conditional order had specifically not had a limit. I should NOT have had to reconfirm at all. That, combined with the fact that it's very difficult to get status information from their web site, poor instructions (the notice on the web site did NOT have instructions on how to reconfirm) means that I will have nothing more to do with etrade.
Just take the usual icon elongate the nose add whiskers and some ears. It's been bugging me that they don't have a animal/creature icon. It would have to be a cool rat of course. I think the fact they have gotten this far a great thing. Like landing on the moon even, a big step and a little step. The penguin has landed. Cheers
Funny. I got an extra 500 @27 and then unloaded at 52. Pretty decent for a "stupid sucker who panicked".
---
Well, it took until about 9pm CST tonight, but I eventually did see my 100 shares of RHAT show up on my E*Trade account.
While E*Trade's web site, email and "account alerts" were all but useless during this entire process, their telephone support people and brokers seemed to be mostly on-the-ball. As some earlier poster suggested, maybe they should change their name to P*Trade.
I'm happy I got some shares, and I'll probably try to buy some more if RedHat comes back down a little... I think it will be a good long-term investment.
----
Life if possible, art at any cost.
You can contact the Securities and Exchange Commission, especially since they record all those nice conversations. At their web site of:
http://www.sec.gov/ (look for FAQ)
or email at (West Coast) sanfrancisco@sec.gov
Will in Seattle
An update...
The $200 I didn't have to cover 300 shares turned into a call on the account for $200. I would need to settle the negative balance in 2-3 days.
Since I was paranoid that they would dump 100 of my 300 shares, I put in a limit order last night at $50 for 10 shares and they sold at $58.
So now I just need to sit on the rest of them.
I like many others opened an account with ETrade just for this IPO. The repricing thing just screwed everyone RHAT was trying help by allowing them in on the deal.
I called Etrade as soon as I found about all the chaos (around 11am PST) and basically was told sorry its too late. Gee, some of us actually work for a living and are in meetings etc and cant immediately respond.
After bitching with the rep, I told them to close my (*#@& account and send me my money. Later I read on slashdot that the message saying I didnt get any shares could be bogus (posted by someone at 1:30pm PDT).
For gods sake, what the hell actually went on. When I signed up for the shares (albeit a measly 200) I selected at "offering price". I didnt care about a $2 fluctation. But because of that, I now have ended up with zero, nada, nothing.
I got sold out for $2. Gee thanks RedHat. Gee thanks Etrade.
If I were a complete jerk, I would be yelling lawsuit. But I guess this message will have to be enough of a venting session for me...
--John C
If you are not happy with E-Trade, transferring your account out of there is a much simpler (and more smart) than trying to close your account.
Go to a brokerage firm, and establish a relationship with a full-service broker (the extra money you pay in commisions is worth it). From there, all you need to do is sign a few forms, and your new broker will handle everything else. There is no cost for doing this either. Now, your account (in whole) will be at the new brokerage, and you are free to do what you want with it.
hopefully, this is a catalyst that will spur a lot of people to invest regularly.
If anyone wants more info., or wants help, e-mail me: robbins@rickjames.sapien.net
I was very bummed to find out that I didn't get a single share at the IPO. After all of the hoops they put us through, including getting a call from Etrade today I thought I would get at least 100 shares. I suspect that very few if any non-Redhat employees, brokers, etc... got any shares.
If you got or didn't get shares, chime in... I am curious.
I suspect that the affinity group was Redhat's backup, the only way we would have gotten shares would be if the ipo went flat or backwards. We were setup to be losers one way or another. If the ipo went flat, then redhat would have made its money off of the very coders it depends on and obviously if it went well, then we were out of luck.
I have learned a lot from this experience though. I know now that if Redhat was serious about giving us a chance, it would have set us up in a separate area away from the family and directors.
Rob's original post tells you how, if you are an "affinity shares" or "directed shares" customer, t get your original conditional offer confirmed. Read before flaming. I swear, Slashdot should disallow Anonymous Coward posting so that we can track all of these bastards who look before leaping. (Oops, I'm not logged in! ;)
You don't have many friends, do you? one egg, take a deep breath and let the anger go. The confusion resulted due to lack of information about the directed shares program. You have to admit that Etrade could improve their customer support a lot by telling people what to expect. Yes, some people did fly off the handle faster than they should have, but that's human nature. When you grow up you'll learn that you have go deal productively with people like them.
It opened at 5pm and is taking questions from customers. I have this funny feeling that some people here may have a few comments to make.
Let her rip!
--
Howard Roark, Architect
Howard Roark, Architect
I believe in a Man's right to exist for his own sake.
The broker I spoke to last night said that because I has picked the box that said "at the ipo price - which is expected to be 10-12" and did not click the box that set a firm conditional price, that I did not have to worry about upping my offer, it would happen automagically - to whatever the price is set to.
:)
Of course he may have been messing with my geek mind , but he _seemed_ legit.
but hey it's too late now.
If you are not happy with E-Trade, transferring your account out of there is a much simpler (and more smart) than trying to close your account.
Go to a brokerage firm, and establish a relationship with a full-service broker (the extra money you pay in commisions is worth it). From there, all you need to do is sign a few forms, and your new broker will handle everything else. There is no cost for doing this either. Now, your account (in whole) will be at the new brokerage, and you are free to do what you want with it.
hopefully, this is a catalyst that will spur a lot of people to invest regularly.
If anyone wants more info., or wants help, e-mail me: robbins@rickjames.sapien.net
Send an email with your full name, address, phone(s), email(s) and a day-by-day blow of what happened to you re the Red Hat IPO. Mention E*TRADE by name, your account number, and whether or not you corresponded by email, by phone, and (if by phone) with an account services rep or a broker. Indicate that you knew the conversation was being recorded.
Tell them what you expect them to do. If you want the minimum allotment of 100 shares at the $14 IPO price, say so. Give the URL of the slashdot article you're looking at right now.
And make copies of the email, send them to the letters to the editor of:
A. your home town newspaper (who might want news);
B. The Wall Street Journal
C. The New York Times (letters@nytimes.com)
D. The LA Times
E. The Washington Post
F. Any weekly papers you read.
Send copies to your Senators, your Congressmembers, and your Governor. And your State Attorney General.
Class Warfare!
Will in Seattle
Doesn't look that way....
5pm EST here, and nothing showing (yet).
I talked to E*TRADE mid afternoon, and they said the affinity (aka directed offering aka letter holder people) allocation would take place ("be complete", actually) at the end of the day after market close.
I assume SOMEONE here would have spoken up if they'd got shares in the directed offering... and since I can't believe everyone got screwed, maybe we'll still get it...
Well, guess what...JUST got off the phone with E-Shit and they said that they are STILL giving out affinity shares!
Hang in there!
Ah, someone like me ... seems you might want to contact the SEC and complain at http://www.sec.gov/ (look for FAQ) or else email at (West Coast) sanfrancisco@sec.gov
I had the same thign happen, and that was AFTER they raised it to $12-$14 and I reconfirmed ON THE PHONE.
Will in Seattle
Well here is another sob story for you. I got
into the origional Conditional offer and was all
set with a limit on the CO of $25. According to
all posted material I SHOULD have been fine. At
10:53 EDT I got a message telling me I had to
re-do the offer but at that time the new CO was
already closed. I had just confirmed my offer
yesterday at noon and was not given ANY indication
that there would be a problem.
Furthermore, After waiting on hold for 10 min.
I was just hung up on without even a 'Hello' now
the queue says I hvae 15 minutes before I can talk
to someone there. I don't see how E*TRADE can
avoid litigation on this screw up. Thousands of
people must have been screwed out of this chance.
-SOTTEK
As has already been stated, $55 * 6 million != $330 billion. Your calculation is incorrect anyway, since the 6 million shares are just the ones sold to the public. Bob Young has about 9 million shares, and he is not even the largest investor. The total Redhat shares outstanding are 66.6 million right now, and with a closing price of about $52, the market cap for Redhat is now $3.463 billion. (strangely close to your incorrect calculation).
Redhat actually only receives $14 * 6 million or $84 million (less expenses) in new money from this offering. At least we know they can afford to pay their hackers for a few more weeks.
Oh. sanfrancisco@sec.gov
Oops.
Will in Seattle
I could certainly see RHAT close the year at $100 a share... however I am not so sure this is a great company to have your retirement money in.
I would not discourage people from selling a good portion of their holdings in RHAT (but still keeping some ownership), and investing in a few more established companies.
The chances that RHAT does not make it (in the long run) are very high, no matter how novel their idea is.
You do not need to buy into a company when they are running their first taco stand on the corner to make very good money in the stock market.
There are numerous, 100+ year companies out there which are growing at high rates that I would consider as better places for a young investor to hold most of his money in.
Yes, everyone admires the captain who goes down with his sinking ship (not that I think RHAT is on though!), but after that initial thought, the people who jumped ship go on living their .
If someone believes in the company, they should not feel bad by selling their shares initially and then buying them back when the price settles down.
They still have a voice in the company, while hopefully having realized a nice profit for themselves.
Get off your high-horse.
10:30 AM CST I just placed a reconfirmation for 14. They will accept them if you received the email, and they will ask you for your email address. The window was 20 minutes for everyone else, longer for the invitees. Etrade blames a new SEC ruling. Go now.
If you are an open source community invitee for directed shares, you should call E*TRADE immediately at (888) 707-8680 x4263 to re-confirm your Conditional Offer. E*TRADE has also been calling people who placed Conditional Offers to re-confirm. Don't feel upset that the web site only allowed a brief window to re-confirm online; this was only for the public shares offering, not the directed shares. You will have to use the phone (or wait for them to call you) to make sure you can still indicate your interest. Don't wait for them to call -- call now!
E*TRADE is saying it's the SEC, but then why would my other broker not phone me to reconfirm when I put in with a $20 limit at up to $100,000 with them?
This is so totally bogus. Contact the SEC at their email addresses: http://www.sec.gov/ (look for FAQ) or (West Coast) email sanfrancisco@sec.gov and give them details (name, address, phone(s), email(s), account(s), chronology, and what you expect them to do about it.
And cc: all the news media you can.
Will in Seattle
I was allocated zero shares by e*trade. Nothing. Nada.
I confirmed my order this morning after the price was finalized, and I was told that the 'affinity' shares wouldn't be distributed until this afternoon. I received the first alert at 12:32, the next at 12:26, and the third at 1:18 (EDT). All three alerts told me that they were unable to allocate my shares, due to "high demand for shares".
What exactly is going on here? Based on what I've read over the past few weeks, only about 400 people had access to these shares, and the shares were to be randomly distributed in 100 share blocks. How is it that I could get nothing? Did RedHat reserve such a small number of shares that not everyone got even 1 block of 100?
Also, I've had nothing but trouble with the e*trade website. Half the time I try to access my 'alerts', I get a message saying that I have to log in again. When I do, the system tells me that my username or password is invalid. But two minutes later, I can get back in. And right after getting the rejection letters, the entire 'Trading' and 'Account Services' sections were unavailable, for at least 20 minutes.
What about the rest of you? Was I just extremely unlucky, or did e*trade screw us all?
Does anyone here worry that with the whole corel deal, and the foothold that M$ still has on the market, that Red Hat might famm quickly? I know that Linux is getting better daily, but you know that there buisness will change slowly and there will always be die hard users. Red Hat is also not the easiest to install, its just well known. I'm afraid that Corel or SuSE might overtake them and kill the stock price..
:o)
.. But then again, I don't trade stock..
Diji
"I came, I saw, I WTF'd!"
The rationale behind selling of immediately is the (often confirmed) theory that usually IPO's open very high, but then level off quickly, before appreciating again. So you might by shares at the IPO price of $14, sell the first day at $55, and buy them back later at $30. So you end up roughly with twice as much shares, and thus twice as much voice in the company.
I just (at 2:42pm EDT) called E*Trade's IPO line at 888-707-8680 x4263 and asked about the status of my order. I was connected to a broker who had me reconfirm my original order -- but he had no new information about the allocation of shares.
To top it off, right now I can't access my account information on E*Trade's web site -- the servers seem to be down.
My guess is that the change in the IPO price coupled with the huge interest in Red Hat shares has overwhelmed the poor servers at E*Trade and that any information we have about share allocations (or lack thereof) is incorrect and out-of-date. So I'm taking a wait-and-see approach. I just hope it didn't hurt to have the broker re-confirm my order!
Market capitalization of 4.6 billion for a company that makes no money is pretty excessive. Sure, it follows the trend of other "internet" tech stocks. Of course I don't have any problem with people cashing in on a big IPO skyrocket, but keep in mind how much you're paying for it. Is the company you're buying worth more than Hilton Hotels?
Check out these companies and their market caps (in millions) to see what I mean:
Abercrombie & Fitch 3872
Adaptec 3616
Bed Bath & Beyond 4120
Bausch & Lomb 3562
Hilton Hotels 3277
ITT industries 3176
Knight Ridder 4163
Mead corp 4104
NCR corp 4321
Natl Semiconductor 4094
Pepsi bottling co 3360
Sigma-Aldrich 3382
Starbucks 3648
Tiffany 3062
Tommy hilfiger 3490
Toys R us 3652
Wendy's 3386
Redhat may do great things for the industry (and for my PC's) but most people I know have bought a hell of a lot more coffee from starbucks than cd's from redhat. It's all about the benjamins...
this sig has been rated E for Everyone.
I would not consider RHAT as a wise long-term investment, more so at this price. Especially if it is a large portion of the money you have saved.
Many younger investors would be better served to sell a good portion of their RHAT holdings and invest in a well-established, quality growth company(ies).
I quote from his "links" page at http://www.jwz.org/bookmarks.html
... and ...
"I hate Unix in general, and I hate Linux specifically, but I'm stuck with them both."
"SGIs, unlike Linux, pretty much just work. That's so refreshing."
It's still a great links page
The guy I talked to said they haven't done allocation yet and are likely to this afternoon.
A friend of mine who's been a director of a public company suggested an ugly scenario: the underwriter holds out on the shares as long as they can. If the first-day trading goes well, they hang on tight to the shares and bump as many people as they can. If the first-day trading sucks, they stuff everybody's account with lots of shares.
I don't think e*Trade is doing this. They left me voicemail this afternoon, they are calling lots and lots of people, that's not the action of a broker who is trying to cheat people. I think they just were not qualified to handle this job. They had better get on the stick pretty fast though!
So, if you think you've got shares, wait until this evening to check out whether you got the shares or not. Due to SEC regulations, they can't give the shares out until they've talked to everyone about the price. Don't panic yet.
Yeah, I'm that guy.
I was in on the original application with an order to buy "at the offer price" That means I will pay whatever they ask, period. I NEVER EVEN GOT the email to reconfirm even though my account is set to deliver these messages to me? I believe ETRADE just cut-off the delivery of these messages to eliminate as many as possible. Since they are receiving all the orders, they are in a position to guage demand(and thus the potential trading price of the stock in the market) I would like to know how many shares etrade(or other firms with a relationship to them) ended up with vs. how many people were eliminated with this self serving stunt. Their should be an investigation. I am going to the www.sec.gov site to complain now, I urge you to as well.
It's a moderated chat room, don't expect anything raw to happen. I've been reading since 5:10pm and the IPO has come up a few times and they have basically repeated the line the SEC regulations forced them to erase the original indications of interest.
The line about the window being so short is that secondary market trading had started and they had to close.
They day that E*Trade accepted the first conditional orders, I had the good fortune to be approved for the IPO, and indicated that I wanted X number of shares. I entered a maximum share price of $18.00. This morning, I was sitting on E*Trade, wearing the reload button out, when I got the alert stating that I would have to place another conditional order. By the time that the message got to me, it was too late - I was SCREWED. Why the hell did I have to place another order for $14 when I had indicated in the first order that I would pay $18 !?!? To add insult to injury, I was suddenly unable to access any of my account information for about 30 minutes. When it finally came back up, RHAT was already trading. So not only did I miss out on the IPO price, but I missed out on the opportunity to buy any shares at all before they climbed to over $45.00. The way that E*Trade handled this was irresponsible, and there is no excuse for the alert taking so long to be delivered. Their system is SLOOOOW and highly unstable. E*Trade: Rest assured that I will be finding someone else to do business with!
Out of order? Fuck! Even in the future nothing works! - Dark Helmet (Rick Moranis) "Spaceballs"
I get an 'empty document' error when I try any member services... Am I the only one ?
Has anyone else noticed that the real-time quotes on RHAT are returning Data is not available every once in a while? Any idea if this is an indication of their DB doing some work with NASDAQ, or just more etrade.com site flakiness?
GStreamer - The only way to stream!
For the record, I had my offering in a week ago then lost it today when they threw out the offerings by raising the price to $14/share. Even though E*trade claimed there would be a 2 hour window in which to re-apply, it was actually about 15 minutes.
One poster suggested complaining to the SEC by visiting the site at http://www.sec.gov. So I did. Here is what they have to say about IPOs:
----------------
Initial Public Offerings
Why Individuals Have Difficulty Getting Shares
Individual investors may be unable to buy shares in an initial public offering or IPO, for a number of reasons. When an IPO is "hot," appealing to many investors, the demand for the securities far exceeds the supply of shares. The excess demand can only be satisfied once trading in the IPO shares begins. This imbalance between supply and demand generally causes the price of each share to rise dramatically in the first hours or days of trading. Many times the price falls after this initial flurry of trading subsides.
The way companies become public through an underwriting by a broker/dealer determines who gets to buy IPO shares before they start trading. The IPOs of all but the smallest of companies are usually offered to the public through an "underwriting syndicate," a group of underwriters who agree to purchase the shares from the issuer and then sell the shares to investors. Only a limited number of broker-dealers are invited into the syndicate as underwriters and some of them may not have individual investors as clients. Moreover, syndicate members themselves do not receive equal allocations of securities for sale to their clients.
In most cases, the underwriters assume the risk of the offering by agreeing to pay the company issuing the shares a set price per share, whether or not investors buy all the shares being offered. The managing underwriter and the company decide on the basic terms and structure of the offering well before trading starts, including the percentage of shares going to institutions and to individual investors (retail customers).
It is unclear how "hot" the offering will be until close to the time when the shares start trading. Since "hot" IPOs are in high demand, underwriters usually offer those shares to their most valued clients.
We receive complaints from individual investors who believe that new rules should be put into place to assure that IPO shares are distributed more widely. Some have suggested that we require a lottery to distribute IPO shares. Unfortunately, instituting and enforcing a lottery would create substantial costs that would undoubtedly far outweigh the benefits. Although we sympathize with those who want the chance to buy "hot" IPOs, it is unclear how we would successfully mandate such access.
The General Accounting Office issued a report on the allocation of IPO shares. Their research indicates that most underwriters target institutional investors in IPO distributions for a variety of reasons. According to the report, underwriters believe that institutional investors are better able to buy large blocks of IPO shares, assume the financial risk, and hold the investment for the long term. However, underwriting firms that have a high percentage of individual investors as clients are more likely to allocate portions of IPO shares to individuals.
Underwriters generally have wide latitude in allocating IPO shares. To maintain the fairness and integrity of IPOs, the National Association of Securities Dealers, Inc. has rules governing these "hot" issues. These rules ensure that the brokers, dealers, and underwriters make a bona fide distribution to the public and not keep these "hot" shares for their own benefit. The rules prohibit firms from keeping these shares in their own accounts or selling them to their directors, officers, employees or to other brokers/dealers. The rules also restrict sales to particular groups of people. Both the SEC and the NASD periodically examine underwriting firms for violation of these rules.
I tried to do a real-time quote on RHAT and here's what I got:
RED HAT INC (RHAT)
December 31, 1969 3:59 PM EST
Real-time quote, NASDAQ NM
...
Doesn't seem very real-time to me!
Quoth the Penguin, "pipe grep more!"
Does this sound familiar?
1) Use and encourage others to use RedHat for years.
2) Don't get a fru-fru letter.
3)Read inane IPO documentation on etrade.
4)Send Etrade lots of money.
5) Squeek in the two hour window on the 4th.
6) Get locked out on the 11th, even though your conditional price is still above the new price.
I sent the recommended email, but I think I'm hosed. If so, I'm going on a one-man tirade against every flippin company involved, RedHat, Goldman, Etrade -- your names are gonna be crap in my book. It may be nothing to you, but I will try and steer future business away from you.
Stop your BS and allocate the shares!
The underwriters, including E*Trade have an additional 900,000 shares available for "over allotments", if needed. Well I think they are needed!
What a FUCKING nightmare! This is actually RHAT's fault since they chose to reprice; etrade is just the lucky company to piss off potential customers.
The long as short of this is that etrade never sent out the second email with instructions on how to change / cancel your conditional offer.
This REALLY pisses me off; I was told that they were no longer accepting conditional offers / changes as of 8pm PST August the 10th.
If after this is all over someone could put this info together so we can see how this anal molestation could be avoided in the future I would be appreciative and happy to contribute the facts I know.
and that's all that matters in here in the good ol' US, right? Got it right around 1230pm (EDT). I didn't get a letter either.
Of course, e-trade isn't my primary trading account, nor did I shove cash into them just for this ventrue. ( I did get bonus frequent flier miles for signing up with them back in March or so though...)
To those whining about not being able to get in (especially you, WillAffleck - I *wish* I had $100 grand to sink in high-risk capital, take a valium), get a hold of yourself. I do admit I was lucky -- I went to the e-trade page today and noticed that I had an alert about the price increase. When I went back to the IPO page it said "Go Now" to place a conditional offer again. This was all in the span of like a minute, so I must have been the first person doing it.
If you must complain (and I'm not saying you shouldn't) be civil. We don't need bad press about hacking into the SEC website, the SEC getting flamed to cinders with email (F* U*, Eat my $H!+, and so forth). That will just make the whole lot of us look like we're 3.
-m
To enter the room you have to enter an ID. I tried "slashdotter", "slashdot" and "slashdotme". All three were rejected. So I tried "isthisworking" and got in.
Hmmm.
Slashdotted! Here is what I get:
We are sorry - our chat is more popular than we imagined and our chat servers are full. You can try back in a few minutes.
I never got any email from E*Trade -- I still haven't.
Well, I was in the middle of posting to slashdot about this when I got a phone call from someone at E*Trade asking me if I still wanted to buy shares at the offering price. I said that I had just checked my account, and the notices seemed to be telling me that it was too late, and that I had gotten no shares.
He sounded uncomfortable and said, ``um, well, it seems that some people got those notices by accident.'' So, I re-confirmed my order, and am still waiting to hear how many shares I got, if any.
I asked him if there was any chance that I would be allocated more than 100 shares, given how many people were participating. He said that it was likely that I would get more than 100, but he didn't want to guess how many.
One of my friends talked to them later in the day, and the rep couldn't tell him whether his confirmation had gone though, because E*Trade's internal system wasn't responding.
They sure have their act together. And they've got a hell of an infrastructure too! I'm so impressed!
It's just amazing to me that a full day of trading has gone by, and E*Trade hasn't yet told me how many of the shares I asked to buy I was actually allowed to purchase.
Once this is all over, I am certainly going to try (again!) to close my E*Trade account. If you don't plan to use E*Trade again, then you should do the same -- if you don't, they'll just continue bragging about their artificially inflated customer count.
(And having open but unused accounts at financial insitutions is generally a bad idea: if they make some stupid mistake, like draining your account with service charges, they can screw up your credit rating for you in ways that are difficult or impossible to repair. I know many people this has happened to.)
I should have bought earlier when I recieved the letter.. I just wish I had the money to spend then
Only 'flamers' flame!
Well, what seems to have happned is that non-affinity program people (no letter), had to resubmit during a little tiny window this morning, and if you didn't, tough.
But if you're a letter person (like me!) you can call up and resubmit. The broker I talked to said they were still accepting indications for affinity members for a little while, but it will close soon. Then they will do the allocations and leave a message in your account.
Of course they were supposed to leave message this morning saying to re-submit, but I never got it, so who knows.
I'm an affinity invitee. I didn't get any eMail but I got the phone call at 9:00am. I sent the eMail as directed to. I even called a broker and changed the number of shares I was interested in (to match my available funds.)
But checking my account I see that I didn't get
a single damn share.
E*Trade can watch about $50K leave their brokerage tomorrow. I've had such a horrible experience dealing with my first IPO (even when invited!) that I can't think of a single reason to have an account with them at all.
Excuse me, but: an IPO is not a normal situation. QUIT YOUR F**KIN' WHINING! All this moaning and complaining just underlines the fact that most of the current posters here seem to know jack-shit about the anal-retentive world of big money. The more you act like a bunch of cry-babies the more you give the rest of us in the linux community a bad name. You don't have more than $1400 to invest in this IPO? Oohhh poor you. So what: you really expect etrade to bend over backwards for you, when there are other customers willing to risk (read: LOSE) hundreds of thousands of $'s??? You want to get in on a sure thing like the redhat IPO? No shit, man. YOU AND 5 MILLION OTHERS. RedHat and etrade are doing everything they can be reasonably expected to do in the present situation. It's a big, fast moving COLD-hearted world out there, boys and girls. Better get out of your diapers if you want to play, or else your gonna get a rash... Hehehehehehe
"n/t" == "no text [in message]", FYI
Well, I just got the message, and was pannicked, as there's no 'Other questions' box.. After sitting on hold a half hour I was able to update my 'indication of interest'. I am one of those who got 'the letter', which I think means we've got more time to update our indications..
But one thing thats interesting, and probably screwed alot of people... E-trade's mail servers sat on this mail for nearly a half hour! Headers show it sitting on mx3.etrade.com, arriving there at 7:29 (PST), and then not arriving at the next hop (my server) untill 07:56. I think if E-trade is going to make you do jump through hoops in 15 minutes they should ensure their mail servers can do things in less than 30!
-- Greg
PS: I just got called by E*trade regarding updating my profile. I imagine they are calling everyone with 'the letter' who indicated interest. I think they are doing a good job of responding to their customers. As for those without 'the letter' who just got scewed by a slow mail box.. well I hope they'll fix it in the future.
Slashdot, would a spell-checker for posting be too much to ask? It's not rocket science!
Ok, here's the thing. The general consensus from people who deal with this shit all the time is, "This is the way things are done". The general consensus of the cynical bastards who got screwed in the deal is, "The whole universe is big guys giving little guys wedgies". Both groups are probably right, but both E*Trade and Red Hat are forgetting something very important in their little plan... Geeks do not deal well with getting anally raped. Here at the end of the 20th century, dorks are perhaps the most volatile group of angry young men in history. And they're smarter than anything E*Trade has working for it - you know that if you spent any time at all with their customer service people. Something tells me that the geeks are about to snap. And if you ARE about to snap, let me know. I'll come along for the ride.
Just got off the phone with E*Trade trying to close my account. They will not return for 11 days even though the money is confirmed withdrawn from your bank. After 11 days they will only send via first class usmail.
I have no beef that I didn't get any shares. I was expecting it to goto the lottery.
What I do have problems with is the problems in communications. no expectations were given with respect to how fast one needed to respond, and the general concensus here is that the window of opportunity was something like 20 minutes.
My recommendation to everyone is to follow the instructions about filing complaints, as listed on the SEC web pages (see the bottom of the web page) I'm going to file a complaint, and everyone else should, too. Maybe they'll fix how the process of an IPO happens and require that the offering price be published and locked for at least 12 hours before acceptances are closed.
- Kevin
This number seems to be hopelessly overloaded. I've been waiting on hold for a quarter of an hour now... (Usually, it was answered within 5 minutes)
It costs $20, but you can get it wired directly to your bank account. Then you can let them close your account that their leisure. AFAIK, e*trade has no maintence fees, so an empty account isn't going to go negative on you and mess with your credit rating.
7:37 PM Eastern Daylight Time: I talked to Vicki (no last name given) (extension withheld). I asked her if they had allocated the Directed Shares Program shares yet. "no". I asked her when they would allocate them. "this evening or tomorrow morning."
I want to know:
How many shares e*trade actually allocated under the Directed Shares Program.
How many account holders placed conditional orders under the Directed Shares Program.
How many account holders were actually allocated shares under the Directed Shares Program.
An ODE to RHAT investors. If you were one of those people that didn't get the IPO from Etrade and was stupid enough to buy in today... your a sucker. you panicked, got Linux excited and overpaid. Wait a few days. The stock is inflated. It will drop. and then you can buy in ~$25 or less maybe in the teens. Redhat will grow. It is a great investment, but not at current prices. Reality check. There are other growth opportunities, VA LINUX is up next. @HOME, QWST, are others.. Also, it can't sustain that price so early. Now don't be an idiot and get emotional that it can. Look at FACTS. The top quality IPOs did in their 2nd day of trading.. They ALL dropped significantly the next day (source CBS MARKET WATCH. Plot each of those IPO tickers for the first 2 days). Even if RHAT is quality which it is. so what... it is going to drop. If I did get in I would of sold at the end of the day and waited till the price dropped and bought up even more... people will hold on. It will drop. You will be pissed and I will get your stocks at a cheaper price. The disgruntled but smart investor.
A week ago everyone was flaming me for loving my broker. Now you are all sick with worry and angst because E*Trade is acting fishy.
I placed my order awhile ago( about a week or so ), got confirmation on it early today and didn't lose a wink of sleep or spend time refreshing my browser or any of that nonsense. Plus, my broker doesn't double dip on the commission like E*Trade is reportedly doing ( although this may be bad info from inexperienced people ).
So, I feel my broker has been worth it. My stress level is negligible, I got my stock @ $14 and I did not waste even 10 minutes of my time over the last few weeks dealing with it, a great situation for someone who has very little time to spend.
Thats why I love my broker.
I was just told by a E*trade rep. 10:48 central time that the "Indication of Interest" will be honored even though you missed the reconfirmation here this morning as long as its $14 or above.
Help fight continental drift.
Any idea why the Red Hat IPO Update /. article and thread, posted by Hemos on Friday August 13, @17:53 EDT from the lotsa-flame dept. seems to have disappeared from the main page ??
I was a an invitee and this is what I learned:
1.) I can design a better web page than theirs
(stock quotes update every 15-20 minutes, accounts
once a day, hunhh?)
2.) Their C/S people are largely clueless
(I have done T/S and C/S before)
3.) I went thru all their hoops and whistles and
apparently still didnt get any shares after all.
4.) Barring some miracle tomorrow, I will do
whatever it take to close down the etrade account,
will file as many complaints as legally possible
with whomever including SEC, Redhat, and any
media source that is available and will actively
consider starting a boycott etrade campaign.
(no stupidity should go unpunished.)
I wanted to buy these shares for the future to
have a voice/ownership in a product I use and support. The long term profit would have been an
extra perk.
Hmmmm..... wonder how many shares Microsoft bought.
I called earlyer this morning, but the broker told me "we'll have to start over all again", and asked me all data I had entered. It just looks like this was for a new order instead of confirming an existing one. Does this mean that I just lost the benefit of the letter and re-entered as a peon? (Btw, I did mention that as an Open Source Community Member, I was part of the Directed Shares program).
Seriously, I have yet to get a single thing.
I'm not even sure how many shares I got through the family trust, probably only 100 shares at IPO, and I had $100,000 sitting in the money market for anything I could get. Because my broker wasn't an underwriter. I accept that.
And I still have 0 shares in E*TRADE. But, because I posted and emailed now 8000 coders have shares through E*TRADE. So I'm bad because Open Source people got shares at IPO?
Get a grip. I never said hack the site (www.sec.gov), I said use the SEC to complain. And I did, and you did, and look what happened.
Justice was (partially) done.
Look, my main accounts fluctuate $3000 or $5000 in a day. But there's no reason they should keep all the people who helped make Linux what it is, and Red Hat what it is, from getting a stake in it.
I'm hoping you'll all keep your shares. And vote them. And keep Red Hat on the straight and narrow.
Of course, some of you won't, attracted by those shiny dollar signs. But don't blame me when it closes the year at $100 a share. You have a chance at the MSFT of the Naughties - don't blow it.
If you got in on the IPO, you now OWN the company. Exercise that ownership. Keep it for your retirement. Use it to leverage a home loan in 2002. But don't sell the stock.
Will in Seattle
According to BUSINESS WIRE, up to 900,000 shares of common stock will be made available to cover over allotments, if any. I think we're in the "if any" part. :-( zardoz
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
I don't know whether I need to be pissed off, but I filled (and confirmed the order minutes ago over the phone) an order for the affinity program, but not for the non-affinity program.
It is unclear to me (and to the etrade trader as well) whether I should have entered a separate order for the non affinity program in case there were not enough shares allocated for affinity program participants.
Your opinion?
It seems very odd to me that this IPO wasn't priced until very late on the day it started trading. Doesn't pricing usually occur the night before? And after it did finally price and start trading, hundreds, if not thousands, of people did not know (still don't?) if they were allocated shares. It looks like a good old fashioned 'up-yours' courtesy of the money boys. They waited to test the market for the IPO before they committed to allocating the shares. I'll just bet that if the demand for Red Hat had been somewhat lukewarm, there would have been a lot more shares for the peons. Just my 2 cents. ;0)
It isn't a box. Got to the account services pages, click on the "Send us an email" link, and then follow the "Other questions" link.
I got "The Letter" and I actually believed the initial $10-$12 range. I know IPOs are weird, even put in $1300 to cover any excess. Then RedHat goes and changes the range at the last minute. So I'm $100 short. I know that the breaks, but it still leaves a bad taste behind. I see this IPO as a big PR blunder for RedHat. I know I'm not happy.
They are the amount from my original intent before the repricing and therefore I don't have the money to cover them. But the Etrade site says I have these shares AND the cast equity in my account. This is f-ed up but I can't complain after all the crap we've been through.
I participated in the mp3.com ipo a few weeks ago and it soundslike etrade is giving it's customers the shaft. I got a email from mp3.com similar to the letter sent out by red hat. I contacted schwab, the broker you had to use to get stocks for the ipo, and put in an order for 600 shares. the night before the ipo schwab sent me a email (and I could choose email or phone notification) that I got 500 of my 600 requested shares. If I DID NOT WANT them I had to contact them and cancel my order. I tried to get an account with etrade for the red hat ipo but after the customer service was so poor over the phone I ended up canceling it. this may sound like an ad for schwab but I wanted to point out that etrade's treatment of it's customers in the online trading world is not the standard
and that if something like this did not happen, my account would be out of E*Trade faster than a hummingbird shits. or words to that effect.
i give this about 1 in 1000 chance of happening. but it can't hurt if other people say the same thing :-)
Looking at CNBC, the guy is standing in front of the redhat ticker on the board. it comes out 12:15 EST, or 9:15 for us left coasters. thats in a few minutes..
Slashdot, would a spell-checker for posting be too much to ask? It's not rocket science!
Just now (9:10 Pacific, 12:10 Eastern) I called an E*Trade broker on the phone to resubmit my indication of interest. I got "the letter", and had put in an indication several weeks ago when all this madness started originally. The broker I spoke to said that ALL INDICATIONS OF INTEREST were erased last night. If you did not get the letter, the 30-minute window to submit an indication already closed. But, if you DID get a letter, it is not too late -- you can call E*Trade and submit your indication of interest right now. Call 1-800-stocks-5, press "2" to speak to a broker, say "I am a RedHat affinity customer who is part of the directed shares program and I want to resubmit my indication of interest", and you'll be transferred to a broker. Then you can tell the broker right over the phone how many shares you want to indicate for. Note you must buy a minimum of 100 @$14/share. In other words, if you want to get in on this, call E*Trade right now and do it. Shares will probably be allocated in the next hour -- don't wait!
I dragged my night-owl ass out of bed this morning at 7:00 AM so that I could get on the Net and the phone. I reconfirmed my order. I would like to have done it on the Internet, but there is no screen anywhere even to display my order! e*trade's rep could not tell me if my order from yesterday (after the price bump) was still effective or not!
I never even bothered to ask if it was still effective. I figured not, given past history. I did find the screen to re-submit the offer, but I couldn't tell you where it is. You wouldn't believe (or maybe you would) the kind of runaround you have to do in many parts of E*Trade's site...
He took a new order. I hope he marked it "Directed Shares Program" as I stated at the beginning, middle, and end. I suppose if it wasn't DSP, he wouldn't even be talking to me.
Most likely. That's good advice for anyone still trying to get their offer taken care of, but only for DSP people. Don't try it otherwise, you'll likely get bumped off E*Trade, not just the IPO. But yes, make sure they know you're in the DSP.
To the e*trade guy that is here asking that we not slashdot the e*trade reps: put up some better news on your site already. An "IPO HOWTO" would help, too.
They have an IPO HOWTO. Due to the fact that their site is a piece of s**t, I can't get to it right now, but I did read most of it, and it covers absolutely nothing about these kind of games (whether they're a lottery or just play E*Trade screwing around, I don't care at this point). As I told an E*Trade rep, incomplete information is worse than no information at all. At least if there's no information, you're forced to look elsewhere. The HOWTO they have looks so very much like a "complete" picture of the IPO process that I naively figured that it was telling the truth, and I wouldn't have to worry excessively about this. E*Trade: either fix/complete the damn thing, or take it down.
GStreamer - The only way to stream!
1.....E-trade always says that wierd thing about december 31 on the realtime quotes before a IPO startes trading...
2.... THe IPO isn't going to start moving tomorrow untill someone with shares chickens out and sells them and someone else has an order in that matches or excedes the price of the sale.(note, this NEVER happens right away when the market opens, cause like I said someone has to chicken out and sell their shares, adn then everyone sees that it's moving and it keeps going)
3.... I don't know EXACTLY when it happened but I did get an order in at 9:24(I first saw the window at 9:17) but I am surprised that anyone can contact e-trade, everytime I tried calling it took like an hour to get thru.
E*Trade phoned me to reconfirm my conditional offer. When I confirmed, they connected me to a broker who took my order. (Yeah! I got some.) This seems to be what they're doing with directed shares recipients who placed conditional offers.
CNBC just said RHAT is about to go out and is being bid up to $45. It's a "singular issue" not tied to fate of rest of market or other IPOs.
would be nice to hear from E*T whether i'm getting any.
Freedom's just another word for nothing left Zulus
It's trading at 42!!!!
GStreamer - The only way to stream!
Opened at 47, but dropping. Wish I had 'the letter'.
Any Affinity / Directed Shares program showing shares yet in open orders or unrealized gains or trading history yet. Regulare etrade account holders are
RHAT 44 0 44 3/8 44 7/16 2,137,600 12:20:20
RHAT opened at 46 then shot to 50 before coming to 44 1/16....
(doubt this is new news by now)
If no one noticed (and I'm sure you all did, its open), and has a current trading range from 42 to 50 or so, although it seems to be heading lower now.
i got 100 shares from etrade, what have you guys been getting? did they have enough to get around once, or did they have to go to the lottery?
Remember when you call the E-Trade broker to specify that your an "Affinity" member when you confirm your order. Affinity == Get the Letter, so you're in. No Affinity == No Dice.
Bonne Chance!!
Time Lord, Dark Horse: The Techno Mage of Gallifrey
... $17.2k account, order for 1200 shares at $14.25.
I figure Scott got a phone call because e*trade doesn't want to see another salon.com article.
I dragged my night-owl ass out of bed this morning at 7:00 AM so that I could get on the Net and the phone. I reconfirmed my order. I would like to have done it on the Internet, but there is no screen anywhere even to display my order! e*trade's rep could not tell me if my order from yesterday (after the price bump) was still effective or not!
He took a new order. I hope he marked it "Directed Shares Program" as I stated at the beginning, middle, and end. I suppose if it wasn't DSP, he wouldn't even be talking to me.
To the e*trade guy that is here asking that we not slashdot the e*trade reps: put up some better news on your site already. An "IPO HOWTO" would help, too. And Jesus Christ, I know IPO's are special, but you are the first offline or online broker I've used that can't tell me the status of an existing order.
will open 12:15, currently bid @55
Per CNBC, it looks as if RHAT is being bid up to $45. The offering price remains at $14. Nice little upside for those who are in on the IPO.
Once Red Hat is publicly traded, what's to prevent Bill Gates from buying a bunch of shares? After all, he's sold several billion dollars of MSFT shares in the past year: Bill's insider trading with the avowed purpose of "diversifying his portfolio".
As a casual Slashdot reader, I'm finding the confusion and hysteria surrounding the Red Hat IPO to be quite interesting.
For years, the hackers of the world have paid very little respect to "financial types" --- those who wore suits, worked in financial services, and talked about money all day. "How pathetic", we'd say, "if I had a job like that I'd hang myself by my necktie."
But thanks to companies like Red Hat, the once separate worlds of the suits and the geeks are colliding. Wall Street started becoming quite interested in Linux. At first, these Johnny-come-lately's where treated with contempt and disrespect. You remember --- every time a financial reporter made a technical error in an article, the insults flew. "They don't know what the hell they're talking about. They just don't get it."
But suddenly things changed, as the financial types had something to offer us. "Hey, wait a minute! Maybe these suits can make us a bundle of money! Hmmmm. Maybe we should start listening to them." The hackers are going IPO!
Problem is, before last month's letter most hackers didn't know an IPO from their elbow. They've just never been interested, and never spent the time learning how the system works. The tables were turned; the once "in the know" were now the ones who "just don't get it". This is where it gets entertaining.
Look at the postings! Lots of "ETrade sucks!" and "Tell me what to do!", or "Let's have a class action suit!". Come on, guys, if you're going to put your money down, learn the drill! Educate yourselves! You're sounding like a bunch of crybaby financial newbies! If you want to play the suit game, Slashdotters, RTFM!
I just got a call from my broker saying that Redhat came out and went up to $45 within seconds. e-trade's realtime quotes don't show that they have come out yet. Oh well if you got shares at $14 you should be happy now..but for me I can't afford to buy enough at that price to make it worth my while.
Unless you don't care whether you get shares or not, confirm anyway.
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Open mind, insert foot.
I've never written a HOWTO, but I think I can cover some of the gotchas that people have run into: such as "the initial range was $10 to $12 so I only have $1200 in my account", or how to say "I am in the Red Hat Directed Shares Program" at the beginning of every conversation, et cetera.
This is only the first of several Linux IPO's. LinuxCare, VA Linux, Caldera; they may have affinity programs, they may not. But I know that the more educated I am, the less stress I feel going through this process.
RHAT 41 0 40 7/8 41 3,996,800 12:28:50
It's open, trading at 41. My shares are not in my account yet.
Bruce Perens.
It opened at $46, peaked at $50 and is currently 40 15/16 and falling. Does anybody already have their shares? So what if we finally get our shares when they will be at $30? Will we be able to collectively sue for the $20 of lost income per share ;-)?
As of 15 minutes ago, Red Hat stock seems to have been publicly tradable. The online chart from Netscape is now showing.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Price has been as high as 50, now hovering in the low 40's. Mossmann (password? what password?)
Seriously. And what peeves me about this is that my other broker accepted an order for up to $100,000 in shares at any price up to $20 and I never had any problems.
Just got off the phone with them and they kept claiming it was an FEC regulation. Which is totally bogus, since, if it was, I would have had to go through the same thing with my other broker.
What gets me is I verbally talked to a broker yesterday and reconfirmed my interest at the $12-$14 price range for shares up to 4000 in number to the total valuation of my account. And that "beep" kept going off while I was talking with her.
No phone call, no email, I wake up at 8AM normally. This is 100% bogus.
Will in Seattle
If you got "the letter", and indicated interest at 10-12, you MUST re-indicate interest at 14. They haven't allocated the affinity shares yet, so you can still call your broker.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
Hello,
Would any affinity members who had sufficent funds and a high enough offer who did not receive shares please email me... Thank you.
I did not receive any shares at all and I will be talking to the SEC and i would like to have others comments...
Douglas Calvert
50 shrs. at 42 $
Next Stop Redmond!
As part of the directed shares program, I just got an alert that I didn't get any.
Seriously, I think we're talking malfeasance here.
Will in Seattle
I was part of the affinity program, and just got word that I received no shares. Looks like even the affinity / DSP went to the lottery.
Bummer.
Just after I posted, I got an alert saying:
D XXXXXX Acct.no.: XXXX-XXXX RE:
Public Offering Order 300 RHAT We w
ere unable to allocate shares. Poss
ible reasons: Offering priced abovelimi
t or high demand for shares. 0000
Yep, most definitely got screwed on this one. Well, time to close my E*Trade Account... Oh, wait I can't, nevermind. My BANK CHECKS haven't "cleared" yet.
Gordon
Okay, So. . .
1) I got "the letter"
2) I was accepted (on the second try)
3) I re-confirmed my interest
4) I had enough in my account
I *STILL* didn't get any M*ther F***ing shares!!
How does all this work????
** Black holes are where God divided by zero **
It's 9:30 am Pacific time, I was able to talk to an Etrade broker after 8 minutes wait, if you supply your "affinity" info they'll put you in. Do it now! Good luck...
too bad the montery ranch is gone though ...:(
100 shares at 14.
I re-confirmed interest in both my etrade and my affinity program shares this morning. I have yet to see any shares show up in my account. The broker said that they would be purchased and show up in my account sometime today and he couldn't tell me how many. Sounds very odd to me that I would get them after the shares started trading.
Public Offering Order 100 RHAT We were unable to allocate shares. Possible reasons: Offering priced abovelimit or high demand for shares.
Seeing as how my limit was $16.25, there must have been a "high demand for shares". C'est la vie.