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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.
No, the underwriters repriced the IPO to make more money. Blame the money men.
The initial public offering price of the 6,000,000 shares offered by Red Hat was priced at $14.00 per share by the managing underwriters led by Goldman, Sachs & Co.,
RHAT news
Whatever, man. Hasn't school started yet? The principal is probably looking for you.
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.
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.
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.
Right, but I'm not the one complaining and blaming Redhat. I'm just pointing out that they put the management of this deal in the hands of the underwriters, that's all. They didn't wake up this morning and decide to screw all the $1200 letter holders by pricing the offer up $2. They checked the tea leaves and decided they could push for an additional ($2 x 6,000,000) $12 million.
Yes, this is good for Redhat, bad for joe coder who barely has $1200 to buy shares and hasn't ever dealt with all this before.
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 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.
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Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
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?
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Open mind, insert foot.
That Red Hat have actually gained, and gained by dollars not cents, over their first trading price is extremely encouraging. Well done to Red Hat and all who invested in it!
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)
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.
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. :-)
Thank you for this timely info!
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Open mind, insert foot.
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)
There was an "alert" posted last night at 10:10pm, saying that if it prices outside of the original range of $10-$12, then all conditional offers must be re-submitted. I called this morning before it priced, and asked the rep "If I indicated interest 'at the market' then do I need to re-submit my IOI?" and she said "No, only if you set a price limit." so I relaxed.
Then I saw it price at $14, and I thought "hmm... let's double-check this thing" and I called the IPO support line again - this time the guy said "No, you must re-indicate interest no matter how you indicated the first time - let me get you to a broker." So I waited on hold, nervously, and finally got through. He confirmed my request, I thanked him, and I hung up.
Re-loaded the IPO bulletin page, and it said that all conditional offers were closed.
Damn, that was fast. Remind me *never* to become a day-trader. I'm not cut out for this.
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)
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.
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
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!
Ditto for me - my account balance shows "$ " - not even $0.00, just "$ "
Looks like E*Trade got Slashdotted? I guess this was one of the few ways I could have participated in an IPO, but geez... I think I better look elsewhere to do any serious online trading. I've tried to give them the benefit of the doubt, but it's getting extreme.
On the other hand, I've had good luck on the phone with them. Maybe they should change it to "P*Trade?"
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.)
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!
Yep, welcome to the capital marketplace. Same thing happened when my company went public last year. The IPO was priced the day of the offering at a couple bucks higher than the range that had been set for 3 months. This obviously sucks if you are a small investor with just enough to cover 100 shares. On the plus side, it means the underwriters are confident about the deal and are upping the price.
This is, unfortunately, the nature of the beast. The market is so fickle, that conditions fluctuate daily. Some IPO's are postponed if the market conditions are really bad. Some are priced down.
It's too bad that so many here are running into this for the first time and getting such a bad taste in their mouths. Something tells me though, that e-trade could care less because they have customers with $100k in their accounts that they will take care of, and those of us who broke open piggy banks to scrape $1200 together who would probably never otherwise play in the market are a much lower priority.
It sucks, but them's the breaks.
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Unless you don't care whether you get shares or not, confirm anyway.
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Open mind, insert foot.
It's open, trading at 41. My shares are not in my account yet.
Bruce Perens.
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)
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.
It's open, now. Came out of the IPO at $46/share, rose to $47 and then fell to $43 per share. Those who got in on the IPO, with a lot of shares, made a lot money. Those wanting to buy shares now, might do better to wait until later in the day, in case the price falls a bit further.
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)