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Red Hat Affinity Offer Extended Until Friday
Just a fast note: if you're one of the Linux developers who got left out of the "give back to the community" chance to get in on Red Hat's IPO yesterday, you have a second chance. We have heard, and I have called E*Trade and confirmed, that you now have until 3 p.m. EDT tomorrow (Friday) to get in on the deal. Clarification - From an E*Trade VP who called me at 6:10 p.m. EDT: You must have already met the offer requirements, and have already submitted your conditional offer if you're still going to get in on the deal. If you have, please call 650-331-5856 to reconfirm by the Friday 3 p.m. deadline. I personally believe everyone's heart is and was always in the right place on this whole thing, but, as they like to say in government, "mistakes were made." Update: Red Hat CEO Robert Young is now worth $472 million, according to this Globe & Mail story.
Not everyone can sell their stock at any price to the public (otherwize I can think up lots of ways
to scam the public).
There are many securities laws on the books that require stock transactions to be recorded at
fair market value, so even if someone bought it at 14 and sold it to you at 15, the seller would
have to pay taxes as if they sold it to you at 70... Then if you turned around and sold it to
someone at 20, you would have to pay taxes on the $5 gain and still wouldn't be able to write off
the $50 difference (although there are some exceptions for gifts)...
Alas, stocks aren't as simple as dollars and cents...
More likely RH is taking advantage of securities laws that allow up to 3 days to close the IPO
and are taking these share from the overallotment reserve that usually comes with each IPO
registration. Normally these shares are used to cover "rounding-errors" created when trying
to match stock lots between large institutional investors to percentages from the allocation
formula. Often the left overs are just distributed to the broker/partners of the large
institutional investors.
So in this case the small guy is making out instead of the wall street suits... yea!
I'd personally say that giving him 1% of the total outstanding shares would be fair. That's worth about $50M today... Quite a lot compared to the $84M they raised on the IPO.
-- Roger.
Dan
The number 270,000 shares (the allocation shown in the latest SEC filing) clearly must not include the 800,000 friends and family shares; do the math. Of course this could be the source of a lot of the problems but I doubt it. Allow me to quote from Red Hat's most recent filing: "If the underwriters sell more shares than the total number presented in the table above, the underwriters have an option to buy up to an additional 900,000 shares from Red Hat to cover such sales. They may exercise that option for 30 days. If any shares are purchased upon exercise of this option, the underwriters will severally purchase shares in approximately the same proportion as presented in the table above." This gives E*Trade an extra 30,000 shares roughly. Still a drop in the bucket but 300 more people at 100 shares each--300 out of roughly 1000 isn't bad and already raises the odds for affinity members a lot. Lastly, maybe someone can help me on the source but I vaguely remember early reports that E*Trade was offering 30% of the shares, not 5%. Early SEC filings show 3 underwriters; the 8/11 filing shows 7 or 8 for some reason.
Hell yeah. Check out the action in my office this morning: Boss: "I got a new Sony Vaio F290 this weekend." Me: "Cool! Can I see it?" Boss: "I like this machine, except this Microsoft software boots up so slow [wink, wink]." Me: "Hmmm, can I borrow it sometime and try something in the lab?" Boss: "Sure. How about right now?" Me: "Wow, look, it's booting right off the Red Hat CD-ROM and recognizing all the hardware." Thank you Bob Young for making this moment possible.
Or am I it? I put my re-confirm in on Friday morning. Still no word. Anyone else in my situation or has everyone received their alocations?
Still waiting, too. I talked to E-Trade last night and the girl told me that they finished allocating on Friday. However, she didn't seem too sure of herself. If you are still waiting would you please post? Or if you re-confirmed late Thursday/early Friday and DID receive shares would you post that, too? And Slashdot, if you're listening, if you know anything could you fill us in? Thanks!!!
il....just curious to know what are the contents of the e-mail... thanks
On Friday, Aug 20th, I magically had my shares from the affinity program show up in my account. Check your account!!!
Ok, I have made a bundle in this IPO. Finally, now I will afford to send $30 for the FSF T-shirt. Thanks Red Hat! But I am not writing to tell you that it will not be difficult paying my rent this year. No, I shout to you that OPEN STANDARDS and free software will soon lead us to victory, to a life worth living. The market has spoken. Microsoft is on the run, and our allies are many. Tomorrow we will taste victory.
Several times in this process, E*Trade has demonstrated that they just totally were not set up to deal with this. They do IPOs all the time, but this deal seems to have really found every bug in E*Trade in the worst way. E*Trade botched things, badly. Red Hat very well could have thrown up their hands and said "well, E*Trade's the problem here, E*Trade has to fix it." Instead, Red Hat tried to fix the problem, including apparently having a chat with E*Trade about the qualification process and apparently again now. So Red Hat is again demonstrating that this is a goodwill effort, by trying to get the opportunity to the people who write code and work around the continued bungling of E*Trade.
Don't get me wrong; the big picture was for Red Hat to raise a whole lot of money. They seem to have done that. But, as their SEC filing says, one of their bigger risks is that a loss of goodwill towards Red Hat from the community, which would be a total disaster for them. So they're being both business smart and community responsible by trying to do this for people.
I sincerely hope that the other Linux companies who are talking about IPOing soon follow Red Hat's lead in trying to do something for the community, too. Red Hat went first and set the precedent. Red Hat also got to be in the unenviable position of taking the most risks and getting stuck at ground zero for all these problems. If other Linux companies do the same thing, they should be able to learn from the mistakes made in this process and future community offerrings could go a lot smoother.
Lesson #1: E*Trade is not the right broker. They seem to have caused a lot of the problems, and it's just not clear that they were anything but straight E*Trade screwing up.
Lesson #2: Young computer people are not investment experts. Some extra hints and much better *documentation* of procedures would help a lot.
Lesson #3: For the broker: lie to us at your own peril. We can type www.sec.gov, we can make phone calls, we can write letters, and we can post on Slashdot. If you lie, there is a much better than average chance we're going to find it and you're gonna get beaten up.
Lesson #4: The community shares pot needs to be bigger, and possibly also the community list itself. I'm not a securities wizard, so I don't know if there's a downside here; I can think of there being upsides in that the community might feel more of a real stake in keeping your stock and having it do well.
I personally have my bets as to which other Linux companies who are likely to try to share with the community and which are likely not to try to do anything for the community. Time will tell.
i called them and they said nope, you can't get more if you already got some. then again, i never believe anything from customer service reps unless i hear it 3 times. but i guess i shouldn't be greedy, eh?
The same story, almost. I could not apply on time because ETRADE's web site would not let me submit the qualification form because my account had configuration problems. I have already posted about this story last week. But when I asked them if I can apply again for the affinity program on the morning of the IPO (after everyones submission was canceled) they told me that I could. Of course, that did not work either.
Does anyone knows if I qualify now?
I've used many versions of RH Linux over almost four years, attended their road-show, followed their activities in the Linux Journal, and am continually astounded that they never seem to learn. Everything they do is marked "amateur". I am not sorry (much) that I didn't bet on their stock. It was the smart bet, if not the lucky one. Looks to me like Red Hat and M$ have this in common: They both will be successful based mostly on being in the right place at the right time and not doing anything stupid. At least the Red Hat people seem to be decent people and so I'm glad to see them profit from their efforts, even if they're weak ones. Caldera and SuSE have always had the technical edge. I'm ashamed to admit that I've been one of the lazy ones (like one of the DOS and Windows crowd) that hasn't wanted to have to change my setup to support a company with the better technical merit. I think the time has come to help another Linux OS company to survive.
Well, I've gotten in to every single stupid phracking window timeperiod phone call whatever...jumped thru every burning hoop held over every vat of radioactive medical waste...spent hours on the phone...
And STILL nobody knows my status or if I'm getting any damn shares! Looks like I got entered into the system twice on two different superspecial lists or something....
I give them until their stupid deadline tomorrow. If I don't get my shares after all of this, all I can say is...they lost a customer AND gained an active enemy. GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR....
The following is an excerpt from an update that I just posted to my web site, giving what I think is the *REAL* reason E*TRADE extended this so-called "offer". The URL to my web site is in my sig.
The terms of the original IPO gives the underwriters an option to reserve some additional amount of shares at the offering price, for the purpose of "covering overallotments". I believe that this is what E*TRADE's doing. In reality, it's not costing them anything, because they're simply selling additional shares, under the original terms. So the mechanics of how this is being done seems to be rather simple.
I believe what happened is that someone at E*TRADE suddenly realized that they are now facing a likely possibility of having to deal with several hundred (if not thousand) complaints going to NASD and SEC. When you have so many complaints thrown at you, something usually sticks. Despite repeated assurances from E*TRADE that they are only following all those nasty NASD and SEC regulations, they obviously do not wish to attract any regulatory attention to this mess.
It's also possible that Red Hat gave them an earful about it. This might be a factor but I believe that the potential for regulatory complaints was their main reason.
Although E*TRADE's eligibility requirements did not appear to be very consistent, many people who are now in the affinity program have moderate or high net worth. Oh sure, the backhanded hints from E*TRADE might've encouraged many people to provide misleading information regarding their financial status, but, in any case, many people in the program are probably very well off, financially. Getting several hundred complaints about them from wealthy and intelligent investors somehow didn't appeal to E*TRADE very much. You can't really blame them for that.
Furthermore, many people were kicked out of the process due to a surprise reconfirmation requirement, that E*TRADE unilaterally imposed in the wee hours of August 11th. If these people had the same reaction as I did to RHAT's steep climb in valuation, this must've motivated many of them into seeking action beyond just complaining to regulators. At the time I'm writing this, I am seriously considering going to arbitrarion as soon as I'm fairly sure that NASD has the ball rolling on the regulatory side. But now, I'm not going to wait for NASD to act, and I will be making some strategic preliminary moves immediately. I haven't reached a firm conclusion just yet, but right now I'm more leaning towards arbitration than I ever was, for reasons that explained below.
This latest development appears to be a rather brilliant move by E*TRADE. The more you think about it, the more sense it makes, from E*TRADE's perspective.
First of all, they're not using any of their own money here, since it's likely that they are getting shares by excersizing the overallotment option.
The people who stand to benefit the most from this move are the people who have applied for the minimum 100 shares from E*TRADE. These people will get everything they wanted in the first place. Well, almost. RHAT's price appears to have already peaked, and it's possible that they won't get the actual shares until the price has dropped somewhat.
Furthermore, I do not know for sure but it appears that people will get only the minimum 100 shares, if they apply for this extension. That's how it lookes to me, and this is consisted with the Wired story. I think it's rather unlikely that people will get all the shares that they initially applied for. E*TRADE is betting that people who applied for a larger amount of shares - 1,000 and more - will be satisfied with getting the minimum 100, and that will discourage them from complaining or going to arbitration. These people are the ones most likely to complain to NASD/SEC, or to seek arbitration.
It is not clear yet what happens to people who do not have sufficient funds to purchase 100 shares due to the IPO being repriced.
So, the interesting question is what will happen to people who've sent $10,000, or as much as $90,000 to E*TRADE, expecting to get thousands of shares? Are they going to be satisfied with getting their a few shares, and shutting up?
In essence, this appears to be very much like an offer of compromise. It remains to be seen if E*TRADE can pull this off. I believe that if someone accepts the 100 shares, they can still pursue some regulatory action or arbitration, but if they do, it's pretty safe to say that this reduces the chances of them prevailing. The transaction for 100 shares can be interpreted as a compromise that relieves E*TRADE of any liability. It's very much like a settlement in a court of law.
Some people got very teed off at E*TRADE. It is possible that they've already sent their complaints before E*TRADE back-pedaled. It is also possible that their reaction would be 180 degrees different, and that they would be offended at this apparently blatant attempt to calm down the barbarians storming the gate. Stay tuned.
--
I apoligize Redhat "Is for the PEOPLE!"
I called up E-trade They known nothing of the sort. It is selling at >$70 .. how are you going to get $15 a share now? Wait it will fall this week and you can buy up. I assume that the affinity group means people who put in orders and didn't get them.. How is this related to developers? Its related ONLY to etrade customers who whined about it yesterday. The post was confusing at best because it didn't specify how you qualify for the "affinity group" and what he circumstances were...
I called e-trade and tthey said I have no chance of opening an account and getting stocks by 3 pm est tomorrow. So.. if you don't have an e-trade account its too late. Hey Redhat extend this by next friday for us lazy people would you? :-)
I have that late homework feeling for some reason.
I just wish I had made my name more visible. As it was, the one RPM of my stuff got taken out after RH 4.2...
Now I have until noon EDT tomorrow to get some code into the Red Hat tree. *sigh*
Kudos to RHAT and E*Trade for doing The Right Thing.
hows this going to work out we can buy the stock @ 15 a share? How is that possible if it is selling @ 72 a share not 10 min ago?
Mike
..when it was called Red Hat Affinity Offer Extended Until Friday.
I have 300 shares in my etrade account, but I hear that they allocated up to 400 for people. I wonder if I could get 100 more if I called them up and changed my allocation. Probably not.
given how tech stocks have been faring lately, some of you more inexeperienced people would probably be better off just putting your money into an envelope and mailing it to redhat :\
Only 10 percent of Red Hat stock was made available in the IPO. Presumably RedHat is making a few more shares available at the original price to the affinity group. (I'm just guessing, no firsthand knowledge.)
-- Alastair
I am glad to see Red Hat's president, Bill GPL, making good on his invitation to the affinity group. You on the other hand, took your chances and won. Why are you posting?
Sheesh.
You flip the stock and then want more? You sold out your ownership for a few measly bucks?
I hope when I finally pick them up at mid-20s and hold them till retirement, travelling around the world and enjoying the good life, that you reflect on how a few shiny dollars made you lose your ideals.
;-)
Will in Seattle
I personally believe everyone's heart is and was always in the right place on this whole thing,
Nonsense. I am positive that E*TRADE was hell bent on kicking out as many affinity customers as possible, so that they can hoard all the shares for themselves.
It was obvious that the IPO was going to go up, but nobody expected it to go through the roof the way they did, so E*TRADE ended up with a whole bunch of people REALLY pissed at them and ready to write complaints to NASD and SEC, instead of just mildly pissed.
The last thing E*TRADE wanted was several hundred complaints sent to NASD and SEC. When you have so many complaints thrown at you, something's gonna stick. So, they came up with this as a way of calming down the barbarians storming the gates. They simply excersized the option that was mentioned in the prospectus: the right for them to purchase additional shares at the offering price in order to cover any "overallotments". This is costing them nothing, and potentially averting a shitload of complaints to NASD.
Of course, all you people who put in for 1,000 shares or more, you'd be lucky if you get more than the minimum 100. You're also pretty much giving up the right to take them to arbitration, since the extension will be interpreted as settlement of any claim you might have against E*TRADE.
--
Use witcapital next time, they have a nice reliable processs, and they too sell IPOs. The only problem I've seen is not enough shares to go arround.
Login your account. Click on Account Services. Click on "Send us an email". Fill out the email form. For subject, type "RedHat IPO Confirmed" For the message body, repeat the subject and add your account number (8 digits).
Don't forget to press SEND!!!!!! Deadline is NOON Pacific Time Friday.
What do you mean? Not going away. What can be done about this? I'm not an affinity person, but I got kicked out of that 2nd lottery on Wednesday morning. Had put down $14 on the original IOI, but they did not carry it over. Can anything be done. I think it's fraud or something like that. Seems very suspicious...
Surprise, surprise ...
Just got through to a broker. Who admitted that the SEC has required them to redo the entire IPO.
Not sure if that means someone's going to handle my shares. But I'm on hold now, anyway.
Gonna switch over and finish some code.
Will in Seattle
The affinity group are those involved in the directed shares program. Ask yourself "Did I get _the_letter_?" If yes (and you put in a conditional offer in the first round) - woohoo you're part of the Affinity group. If no - you're SOL, and buy at market value.
the community could compensate coders who gpl their work and send it in to RH or whomever, and it gets used.
The answer is so easy.
RH should just send the contributor a share to two, or some other fair and reasonable quantity, of stock. In the case of RH, RH still has 9 million (?) shares unissued, and they would simple issue a few of those in the name of the coder, making the coder an "owner" in RH (lacking control, but still an owner) in exchange for the gpl code. Stock certificates are really a form of script money anyway (as are our federal reserve notes), so why not just pay them in RH script instead of Fed script. IF the coder wants to convert his RH scripts into Fed scripts, he can easily do so.
Basically, all this does is do away with the broker, and the need for the coder to have sign all kinds of papers and have x-$ of cash lying around. Coder gpls his code, sends it in, code gets used, coder gets paid in stock certificates, printed from nothing, with no dilution of the company, because the new code alse increased the wealth of the company.
Stupid?
Keep this info coming. I too called and talked to a broker. I was told that the SEC was the ones that made them nullify the original IOI people and redo the lottery. They did not mention "redoing" the IPO. Which I find awsome, but improbable. As it stands now, I'm one of the people that thought they had shares going into Wednesday morning and missed the second window. I actually went to sleep Tuesday confident that even if the redid the lottery, surely they would carry over those folks that indicated a higher price of at least $14/ share. Thank you SEC for "protecting me from myself" Who protects us from you?
I am in the same boat. I got the e-mail invitation but missed the chance to get in. I just called E-trade. They said that even if I put my indication in before the cut-off time, it would be mpossible to open an account now and get the shares before the 3pm deadline tomorrow. Oh well, I screwed up and will have to wait for the next chance - if there is one.
Well, isn't that cute. But it's WRONG!
For more information, click here.
The first deadline was july 28th, which you've missed by rather a lot by now.
See how much of a scam this is? Robert Young now had "made" $700 million dollars. How much has Linus made? How much has EVERY OTHER PROGRAMMER WHO HAS CONTRIBUTED TIME AND MONEY TO THE LINUX EFFORT MADE? Don't be stupid, don't work for the mega corporations for free. Down with OSS!
The first rule of investing: Don't get emotionally attached to your investments.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
not bad I think, considering I wrote my software primarily for my own use, not to make money.
I think E*TRADE had shares to make available to general E*TRADE members, and then specific shares set aside for affinity members as part of the directed shares program. If you bought your shares in the 20 some odd minute window when you could submit conditional offers on the main site, then I think the shares you purchased were from those for any E*TRADE members who managed to get in on the IPO. In which case you are probably still eligible to possibly acquire shares through the affinity program. Now, this was a guess on my part, as I am in the same position, and I spoke to a few different people at E*TRADE today. A few were deliberatly vaugue and said they were not sure, but the one gentleman said I was probably right and I should try not to pass it up. So obviously I'm giving it a shot....
He mentioned that in an interview -- not how much, nor the option price. Sorry I have no URL for that interview.
This is right on target. An IPO-HOWTO would help a lot. The pressure on people who have The Letter is incredible. I see people here who gave up during the process, and that is a shame, and some more community infrastructure would help people navigate the maze.
All of us mere developers whose code Red Hat ships every day, but who didn't make it onto the short list are still out in the rain. I guess a couple of Perl modules and Gimp plug-ins just didn't cut it ;-)
Goldman Sachs and e*trade are entitled to the green-shoe allotment whether they give any to affinity customers or not. Read the S-1. If e*trade didn't run this program then they would keep all those green shoe shares themselves at $56 per share in profit. I agree with Will Affleck here, this smells like serious arm-twisting by Bob Young: e*trade: "Yeah we handed out some shares." bob young: "I have 300 pissed-off people who didn't get any." e*trade: "Tough, we blew them off. More $14 RHAT for us and our favorite clients." bob young: "You will deliver on Red Hat's promise to them, or *we* will join them in bringing down the SEC on your head. Because we need the goodwill of these people." Yesterday e*trade was giving guys like Mr. Affleck with $100k liquid cash 0 shares, while they are initiating calls to brand new customers to help cut them in on the hottest IPO of the year. If you don't know how extraordinary that is, you don't spend much time on Planet Wall Street.
Not to mention the possibility of a huge class action suit. It is known by now that the allocation for the lucky ones was 400. Now just imagine what happened if 6000 letter receivers gathered together in, and sued for 400 * ($70 - $14) * 6000 :
A nice $130 million class action suit!
This is de facto compensation of Open Source coders, thus providing an alternate incentive to write GPLed code (as opposed to those motives which have driven the movement for years now). The only problem with this type of incentive is that not everyone has millions to throw around at programmers. Red Hat gains a rather perverse advantage in the marketplace, because it can now hire coders w/o really hiring people. Plus they can suck coders away from other projects because, after all, they decide who gets shares.
If there is a way to turn Red Hat into Microsoft, this proposal is it.
Let's try not to let fact interfere with our speculation here, OK?
Something is VERY fucked. E*Trade has swiped a bunch of the shares that were meant for US, and according to Rob, they won't finish alloting them until Monday, and the stock has already been trading, and we missed out the first day! They FUCKED up! I also am going to go to arbitration! I ordered 2000, and had enough money for 800, dammit. I am NOT content with the little BONE that E*Trade threw us to shut us up. They are going to PAY.
Yeah, me too. I mean, I talked with a broker and reconfirmed at $12-$14 and discussed pricing at $14, so I was happy in Pacific Coast doze time while they tried to screw us over ...
Hey, don't knock the SEC. They may not be fun at parties, but if it weren't for them, small and moderate players would get rolled over by insiders and big guys every day of the week. I mean, I've handled more than a million, but until you have more than $100 million, you're still fairly small.
Will in Seattle
... that you can't receive more (even if you only asked for and received 200)- that this is only for those who didn't receive any the first time. However, sometimes E-Trade gives conflicting information. If anyone hears anything differently regarding shares for affinity members would you please post what you were told? Thanks!
If you've written any open source code included in a Red Hat distro, he's done it on YOUR back.
Vampires rule!!! But only as much as the suckers (programmers) are willing to give... Fight the GPL -- license your software under something that gives YOU the benefit of your labors, not the vampires!
Ah. Well, in hindsight you probably wish you had, but at the time you probably made the same decision I would have.
And now you can say to your wife: "See, honey, you're more important to me than all the riches in the world."
Major bonus points.
Will in Seattle
I mean, I like owning. It's fun to fly to board meetings on St. Kits, take in the sun, and write it off. It's neat to vote the stocks and blackball anyone who ever served on the Trilateral Commission (which I have done) and vote against all the multi-board members and for most of the women. And you get cool toys sometimes.
... ;0)
Face it, Red Hat is a very small fraction of my total investment portfolio. It's my risk money.
My bet on the future.
So, I think I can afford to get emotionally attached to this.
Actually, the first rule is, never count a profit or a loss until you actually close the sale and include the commissions on both ends and then extrapolate the capital gains
Will in Seattle
Yeah, that fits. The SEC basically told them (guess) that if you passed the first hurdle which screened out improper indications of interest (which they DO have to do, but not so stringently as they did with Affinity), that you're still in the game, since the second hurdle was practically impossible for a large majority of qualified IPO participants.
Good call by the SEC. Fair too.
Will in Seattle
Exactly. This is a VERY expensive lesson for them. The sad thing is, I'm not sure they've quite sussed that it's not just the Affinity people, but the true believers who put their cash in just for this one IPO (e.g. me). And that some of us have the time, the energy, the resources, and (if I have to escalate to that level) the connections to make things get even more warm in the frying pan.
Publicity usually costs money. Customers cost money. But bad publicity from determined people who have stared major multinational corporations down and are quite willing to use every legal means in their power, it's priceless.
Which story? Check out all the old threads. Mine is the many posts encouraging people to contact the SEC. I usually prefer to be more in the background, but post what you will.
Will in Seattle
Seriously. I know it's stupid, but "Industry Analysts" say that Linux must be good because the Red Hat IPO did so well. Baaaaa. Baaaaa. Baaaa.
...) don't get it yet, but the bell has just tolled. We all know this has nothing to do with the real merits, but did MSFT have anything to do with the real merits?
So, look for lots more companies to suddenly push getting a Linux version out the door and a lot of CIO/CEO doors swinging open instead of being shut (not that it stopped us).
Some people, like Laura who I talked to today at Microsoft (I know, I know, but she's cute, single, and likes politics
Salut, mes copains! Nous sommes les juges de la futur!
Will in Seattle
Heh. Good ol' RMS. Well, I think RMS, and the people he works with, don't really care about money.
Are we ever going to get an explanation for the disappearance Wed. evening (U.S. east coast time) of the "Red Hat IPO Update" story from the main page?
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
A vampire is now worth almost half a billion dollars!
Mad props to all you dedicated coders who made him rich by giving away your code!!!
(Thinking about moderating this down? It's all about free beer, and YOU KNOW IT.)
--
Anonymous cowards have more fun.
No I did not give up, E*TRADE pretty much jerked me off completely. I've tried to work with them, but they decided to blow me off. There was nothing I could do. They slammed the door in my face, so the only option I had left was closing the account, and move the funds back to my current broker. I was certainly not going to do additional trading with E*TRADE after they treated me the way they did. Screw them. I prefer to send my commissions to a broker who wants it, thankyouverymuch.
Thank goodness I didn't move my entire brokerage account to E*TRADE, instead of just sending them some loose change. Otherwise, my entire portfolio - instead of measly cash - would be stuck in limbo right now, while those clowns are picking their collective noses.
I'm done venting tonight.
--
because the coder could also send his code into AOL, or whomever, who, if they used it would send him a stock certificate, also without dilution.
This is really a way for a coder to work in his basement, gpl his code, create new wealth, and get "paid" by participation in the economic growith which his code assisted in creating. And, if for example, AOL or RH or IBM doesn't pay the guy a fair price, he complains on slashdot, and the sense of fair play comes into effect. That is to say, other coders would come to his defense.
The flaw is I'm not sure that this works with the gpl license.
I have the same concerns about RedHat, especially when I see that they are backed by the very same people who fingered Bill back in the 60's. These guys do not play tennis with the net up. I'm coming to think that at the CEO level both companies exist only on the ethics of parasites and thieves. Exactly as we saw Bill get transformed into a thief, back when, I fear we are seeing Bob Young also transformed. He now joins the Fortune 400 club of billionaries overnight, all on the work of others, and to show his graciousness he will sell them a fancy sheet of paper at wholesale prices.
Although most coders are still a little wide eyed on this point, the sh**ty part of Bob Young's "affinity deal" is that he is *selling* sheets of paper, albeit not at retail, to the coder as a gratuity for using his code. He really ought to share the fruits of his incorporation of the coder's code with the coder, by trading shares at the same cost he paid for their issuance, which is probably 10 cents per sheet of say 100 shares, and not his wholesale price of $14 per share. Should Linus Torvalds also pay $14 per share? Such a steal.
With this IPO the power of RH to dominate Linux is now excessive, and that is precisely why we have got to find a way to pass through the privileges of incorporation (sale of pretty looking sheets of paper) straight to the coders, at the cost of issuance and not at wholesale or retail prices. Paying them in some form of temporary fictitiuos currency, or in certificates purchased at wholesale price ($14) or retail price ($35?), for real work by a coder and growth in programming power and wealth, is not fair play in my opinion. Bob Young did not pay $14 per share for "his" shares, so why should he charge that to the coder who code he has incorporated.
It's really a huge problem, and I am increasingly haunted by it, because it affects everybody, coders, scientists, artists, everybody who tries to take on a long-term complex project for the betterment of man. It's exactly at that font that we are all getting ripped off by the parasites who seem to percolate to the top.
What about the FSF? I think the whole Gnu-Linux naming war is silly, but they've probably contributed far more software to RedHat's flagship product than Linus himself and it would be too bad if they weren't rewarded as well.
-----
Free P2P Backup, Windows & Linux
RedHat doesn't *need* to give anybody any shares as a gift! Neither to Linus nor GNU. Yes, RedHat does/did not develop most of Linux. And Yes, I can freely download RedHat Linux or order the Cheapbytes CD for $1.99 + shipping. RedHat is in the business of support and distribution the way I see it. Is their contribution of developers and Linux advocacy not enough?
It's gonna dive in the next weeks. Not because of any shortcomings within Red Hat or Linux, but rather because all IPOs do it. The only question is, how much (forties? thirties? twenties?), and when. When you feel like it has reached its bottom, buy back double the shares that you flipped, and keep them as a long term investment.
Well, it doesn't look like etrade got to screw the affinity program people (It certainly looked like they were trying). I got 200 shares, and am absolutely thrilled, not because the stock price is good, but because I got in from the beginning.
I feel that etrade needed to have better communications with their customers, but I don't intend to trade with them anyways (EVER AGAIN).
It would be nice if they would let us in on the reasons the messages were conflicting, and how they intend to make sure somthing like this doesn't happen again.
One way to make sure it drops is to scare all the investors into trying to sell their shares. What are your motives?
Wow, how tempting would it be just to sell all your stock, rake in the $600 Million, and just walk away...? I'm not a millionair, but quite frankly I couldn't give a rats ass if I had $600 Million or $600 Billion. Both are a LOT more than you'd ever spend in this lifetime.
If you're going to sell high and rebuy low, just remember to take out (or at least give some consideration to) your short term capital gain tax before you reinvest.
For example, if you bought 100@$14, sold 100@$80, your capital gain is $6600. Take out your short term capital gain tax (~30% for me) and add back in your initial investment of $1400 -> $6020.
So if the stock hits $60.20, you really only have enough after tax cash to buy 100 shares ($6020), not 132 (~$8000). If you bought 132 you wouldn't really be getting ahead of where you were before.
(at least this is how I worked it out -- anyone disagree?)
If you paid attention, the affinity offers came out of RESERVED shares. so they didn't go to any institutional investors. This just means that "members of the open source community" were able to get 400 shares instead of maybe 300.
If anyone out there has the letter, I will pay you a 10% commision to buy me 100 shares at $14. I can wire money to your account before 3:00 if needed. This is free money! Just increase your request to 100 shares more, and then later assign the shares over. No risk to you and a pickup of $140 (as well as a way to help someone who didn't bother to put their name on stuff they've done for Netscape Gecko's open source DOM and some driver hacks). Please respond ASAP to mail@domainsource.net or call 703 351 6232 (Northern Virginia). Thank you very much, this is a very frustrating experience. David
>Is their contribution of developers and Linux >advocacy not enough?
:-)
That's just plain business sense. They need to have some say in the base product that they make their ultimate $$$ from, after all.
Giving the bucks directly to Linus and/or the FSF is just a nice corporate citizen kinda thing, and great PR to boot. Like I said in my original message, if they boned Linus, I'd just stop using their product. So long as I know they slipped him a nice deal, I'm happy.
...not as happy as I'd be if I owned some RHAT myself right now, but that's another point entirely...
It's a strange world -- let's keep it that way
Wow, wish I *hadn't* called yesterday to confirm my shares. Talk about a gift!
I guarantee that there won't be many of the following conversations with E*Trade:
"And how many shares would you like to confirm?"
"Gee, I dunno, this could be a risky proposition... I better just do 100."
"Ok, golly, good luck! I sure hope they do well. But you never know..."
Hi: I lose my letter for redhat ipo. Can anyone tell me what is code to get redhat I will appreicate your help. My e-mail:jimmy4024@aol.com
Good news and we're all very happy for developers and the testers. But those of us who are advocates and wanted it for the long haul still got ignored on the IPO letter and then didn't receive alerts. How can we really trust e-trade again? They've completely developed their product for day traders that can sit around watching the market all day. But I am happy for the developers and testers they definately deserve this act of respect.
No, not the IPO, me.
See, somehow I got on the list and recieved the email. But I was on my honeymoon and didn't get it until the 28th, when the original deadline was. So I forgot about it.
On the 6th, I discovered that the deadline had been extended, but that I didn't know, and I'd missed it again.
Now I hear about all these extensions... oh, the pain.....
I got the Red Hat letter, which apparently means I'm what they call an "affinity member". I filled out my profile at first going through the URL in the Red Hat letter being very conservative and was denied. So when they let all the regular E*Trade customers in on it I just went that way, and filled out my profile again not being so conservative, and was granted. I didn't get in because of the $12/$14 thing, and now they tell me "Sorry, you did the Wrong Thing by going through the other way, and you're no longer an affinity member." Hearts in th.. *mumble*
I got 200 shares and flipped just enough to get back what I originally put in, plus a little more for taxes. Can I buy MORE at $14/share now? Has anyone called and asked them this? Is there a maximum allocation? I will call them as soon as I have a moment to sit and wait to be on hold..
Guess that means RFY is now worth about $663 million (at least at this very minute). Must be fun to have your net work vary by $100k for every basis point of stock fluctuation...
Twelve-and-three-quarter inches. Unyielding. This wand belonged to Bellatrix Lestrange.
Hey, we don't like to think about it, but it is going to happen. You guys hold on for the ride... Why you say? I did my homework.. 1) August is historically the worst on record 1950 up..(source FRI CNBC story see for yourself) 2) CBS Market Watch was looking at the capital valuation - the amount of money coming out to investors support their growth. Its not going to happen. 3) Rising interest rates. Later this month Fed wil do it. Count on it. If that scares tech stocks, it will hurt RHAT. Don't kid yourself. 4) Most people who invested have no clue about Redhat except about its linux rivalry to M$. That is dangerous in the short term ,because most of us I gather are long term growth. Many people will short.. alot of them when it growth slows down. Go to the chat boards. every other post is LC (linux clueless). 5) MS is going to provoke RHAT - A friend of mine is forced the task of beta with win2000. It runs Linux as a window (so he swears) sort of like DOS. (although we know MS win is crap, some people might not think so). Rumour has it that they are aligning several Linux'y feaures to it. Just hold on... it will dive and correct. Remember no spam. It just food for thought.
So far I've only seen reports of people getting 400 (or less, if they asked for less). Are there any other people who got 500?
Isn't it too late by now to open an account and submit an IOI? As far as I understood, the extension is only for those that submitted an IOI before the August 10th deadline, but couldn't confirm. Supposedly E*Trade will verify their logs to make sure that you submitted an order in the first place...
If I remember correctly, the initial screening was supposed to protect you from yourself: i.e. avoid that novice investors sink their life savings into a risky IPO. However, by now the situation has changed: RHAT is trading, and we know the outcome. The risk is gone. It's like going to Vegas and betting after the ball has already rolled. So, if they're consistent, they should drop the screening.
If you didn't have (or falsely claim to have) lots of money and trading experience, you could not take advantage of this offer at all. There was never any change or "reversal" or modification of this policy, only a lot of evasion and confusion. Those who aren't wealthy were still left out after receiving the invitation, and neither Red Hat nor E*TRADE did anything to change this.
Whether or not they had any choice in the matter, their offer was not ultimately effective in sharing stock options with the free software community in general; only a tiny minority were possibly legitimately eligible for any of the "revisions" of the offer.
Amazing as it may sound, I've never had any problems with brokers up till now, and I've had a few. Sure, a couple glitches, but most people (E*TRADE excepted) will admit mistakes that were made on their end. Full service, discount, and electronic brokers.
So, since I've never had to do it (but know I can), exactly how do we file with NASD? I knew the SEC would be useful RIGHT THEN, but now that I've helped everyone defend their rights, it looks like I may have to file for my own rights. Yes, I know, the teeny print probably said something about binding arbitration, but it would still be nice to have a web page (and email) pointing us to those wonderful complaint mechanisms.
You'd think E*TRADE would start figuring out that we don't roll over and we DO know about computers and the Net. But no, it feels like pulling teeth.
Will in Seattle
Yeah, I've tried to be reasonable with them, following the ten steps that the SEC says to do. Time to escalate to the next level, which is NASD, I guess. I talked with a broker's supervisor and he said he'd talk with his manager. I think it says you need to send a written letter to the brokerage firm (E*TRADE) next, and then it's NASD complaint time.
... maybe I might have to buy when it dips to the 30s ... not sure it will go back to the 20s.
They have until this weekend. When I do these steps I'll post them, since I seem to have a knack for getting responses sometimes. Depends on if I'm busy on dates this weekend too.
Aside: $82 and counting
Will in Seattle
Yep, today, RedHat Inc. surpassed Microsoft Corporation in terms of Ask/Bid price for most of that day, in fact (still trading)! It's quite likely they will remain close (last check they differed by less than a point) for at least a little while, but I do expect a market correction soon. Just in case though, I still hung onto 10 shares or RHAT... :)
:)
Will buy back at around $40 to $50...
(Which is where MSFT was around 8 October last year...)
Time Lord, Dark Horse: The Techno Mage of Gallifrey
Hmm. Well, all they would admit (over the phone) to was 100 shares. I know if it has to go to arbitration, I'm certainly not settling for less, but that's what they told me.
...
Wonder if they realize that some of us have a lot of free time to contact media sources over the weekends? Naah. Personally, I'd rather be mucking with my servers, but
Will in Seattle
I mean, if I have to go to arbitration, I'm going for full allocation. And I chose not to put that $51,000 in Schwab (to get their premier line qualification, with my other accounts there) but with them, all for the IPO.
Their call.
Will in Seattle
First, I'd send E*TRADE an email. Then I'd send a full chronology of events, including any live telephone conversations with account reps and brokers (important to say which, and note that conversations are recorded, so they know who).
...
Send it to the SEC branch nearest you.
If no reasonable resolution, time to file a complaint with the NASD.
When do you think they'll clue in that we're going to stand up for our rights and are not gullible about exactly HOW technology works
Will in Seattle
There is actually a formula for determining market price depending on the spectrum of active bids
and asks
Unlike options trades, there is a certain matching requirement for bids. The reason it's not allowed
is because if you sell at 50% of market, you are not allowed to say who buys the shares. To be
fair you have to match your ask with someones bid which is probably not the bid of the person who
you were trying to sell to.
Think of it this way. If you ask $10 and someone else asks $40, the top bid is $50 and the next
bid is $30, what is the fair way to do this? Do you sell all of your $10 shares to the $50 guy?
Or do you sell your shares to the $50 guy for $50? Or should the $30 guy get to buy some shares
if you agree to split the difference?
What keeps a middle man from bidding $51, getting your shares for $10 and selling it to the old
top bidder for $50 and pocketing the difference? Not so simple huh? And these are simple problems
compared to having 1000s of bid and 1000s of ask and limit orders etc, etc...
Non-market trading of public companies is highly regulated because the of the fraud potential.
When the difference is 1/4 point, millions of dollars can be made or lost by the way you select
how the orders match up. The market makers are accused on a daily basis that they manipulate
things by placing a whole bunch of strategically priced orders on the books.
Just think if you made an ask 50 points below market or a buy 50 points above market...
Who gets to benefit from that transaction? Things could get really complicated...
Now if you have a private company, you can pretty much do whatever you want... no need to be fair...
has anyone gotten shares from the affinity program yet? anyone know when (if??) they will be allocated?
I've heard _nothing_ from them. Had anyone heard anything about Friday allotments??? (cc me directly, pls.)
Well, if you don't want me to pay attention, why don't you just give back your shares?
I don't claim to be an expert on IPOs. I just know through my experiences in trading stocks, bonds, mutual funds, options (hate them, but I get them from stocks sometimes and have to sell or exercise them), etc.
And I know when someone's trying to rip me off.
Will in Seattle
Well, think about all the working people who are going to watch Wall Street Week on Friday. On Monday they'll be phoning their brokers to buy Red Hat.
...
Which means up for Monday, maybe Tuesday. Wednesday is stale and maybe down Thursday and Friday. Close week around $60-$80 range.
So, guess end of August, beginning of September for $30 range.
And then back up we go
Will in Seattle
I only wish they would have included RHCEs in on the IPO. I am one, so that obviously explains why I feel this way, but I think it would have been fair. I went after an RHCE pretty much as soon as I found out the Cert was available. I did this out of support for Linux, and my strong belief in it. I don't think we should be allowed as much as the actual developers, but throw us a bone.
:)
Oh well. Nothing lost I suppose, other than a few thousand dollars.
I think I would be in heaven if only I could find a Linux job.
14% of 69 million stocks at $72.625 each, so it's like $700M now. Funny how these large amounts of money that are so ridiculously large I can't even understand how large they really are change so much in just a few moments...
If we're not Affinity group, it looks like they think we'll go away. Which is mildly amusing, seeing as I didn't get into Who's Who by rolling over for anyone, and I'm not about to start.
Of course, you realize filling all those shares from either the aftermarket or the float must have cost them $30 million to $48 million in unrealized profit. So let's not get too greedy out there.
And again, remember, you now OWN Red Hat. If you go and flip it, you just gave away control to the Bill G's of the world. If you hold it, you'll have a nice UNTAXED investment which you can retire on. Me, I always buy for long term, and Red Hat is one of the few that is going to do well long term, as we go forward into the Naughties.
Will in Seattle
C'mon, why should Red Hat pony up shares? E*TRADE had the shares and gave them away to other investors, probably institutionals, when they shouldn't have. Which is not ok, and the SEC got involved. So now they're using their float (which they maintain) of shares as an underwriter to fill these IPO priced shares for all you coders. Since NASDAQ has regs about how much they have to maintain, they have to refill the float on the aftermarket (instinet, other markets) to maintain sufficient float to cover friction.
...
And, since the SEC is scrutinizing them like a hawk, they can't just call in favors to fill up the quota and cancel other filled orders, like they would probably try otherwise.
Think I'll go check my account and see if they came to their senses yet. I'd hate to have been at the E*Trade board meeting or any of the videoconferences with the other underwriters. Or hanging around Bill G today. Talk about screamfests
Will in Seattle
I maintain a GPL'd program and I didn't get any letter from RedHat. I was annoyed to see that people who had never even sent a patch were sent a letter. I invested a bit of my money yesterday, and the stock has gone up nicely, but _now_ they say I can get in a $14. How is that supposed to work? I sell the stock I have now and buy new stock at the lower price? Does the $30K SEC thing still apply? This has all been very confusing.
I got the letter, filled it all out a week ago and got denied. I decided not to call up and lie, and sat in agony as the stock shot up. After reading this message I called again, and they took my name and account, made me sit on hold for 5 mins, and then said, ok you are still denied. oh well, it's just money. (actually I think I was in it for the braggin' rights more than the money) -chris
I have been reading these threads for a while now - and I can't believe how much mis-information is one here. I am probably going to get spammed - While many of you are great programmers - you have a lot to learn about investing. let me try and set some facts straight: 1. Going back to the initial sign-up - the qualification there is a SEC requirement. Its to protect unsophisticated investors in buying speculative offerings. this form is required for every IPO - not just redhat's 2. the fact that you failed the form - really means in the SEC eyes - you are unsuitable to invest in these offerings. Neither Redhat or Etrade decides that - they must follow the SEC rules 3. Etrade actually bent over backwards letting you re-submit the form - with likely erroneous information. THEY DID YOU A FAVOR. Please, no sob stories of how they should have told you how to fill it out. This is an SEC requiremnt - egt it. They can't legally tell you to lie on it - which I am sure many ultimately did. 4. The reconfirmation scenario was indeed unfortunate - but agian - this was an SEC requirement. ETrade in the past did not require this reconfirmation (nor did some other online brokers) - however, the SEC recently issued a ruling requiring this reconfirmation be put in place whenever the terms of the deal change. It just so happened that the timing of this was a few days before the Redhat IPO. So yes, ETrade was not as prepared to handle it as they should have been - but they were just following SEC rules. 5. to state that again - the terms of the deal changed from when you initially submitted your conditional offer (ie the price range was raised for $10-412 to $12-$14. this triggered the reconfirmation mechanism. 6. to further compound matters - the deal was not "priced" and not declared effective until Wed morning. This is something also outside of etrades control. The lead underwriter, Goldman Sachs solely determines the price of the deal. The SEC must review the documents and declare it effective. Due to the large number of IPOs pending in the market - the SEC did not declare the deal effective the evening before as is typical. instead - they declared it effective the morning it was due to trade. this forced the reconfirmation process to be extremely short. 7. that said - those with the letter - were under special circumstances. Because they were in a directed shares program - etrade could extend the time period for them to reconfirm. Etrade in fact did do that - and went out of its way to contact people - by account alerts, and via phone. Everyone should have had an opportunity to reconfirm I know some here are still upset. If you want to let greed cloud your judgement - fine. but having invested for many years, including in other IPOs - I must tell you this process is very typical. An Aside to Will - you have posted some of the most grating and ill-concieved commenst I have seen. i understand you are upset. but lets look at the facts. 1. You did not have the "letter" - so you weren't part of the directed shares program 2. You did submit your conditional offer under the regular offering 3. you missed the reconfirmation window for the regular window - which I agree was short 4. Throughout the entire process - it is clearly stated that submitting a conditional offer is no guarantee of getting shares. 5. Numerous folks ( More than half based on my analysis) who were able to re-confirm their original conditional offers during the 2nd short window did not even get shares allocated to them. So even if you did reconfirm in the 2nd window - you had less than a 50% chance of getting shares. 6. So you are pissed off you didn't get any - and want to hold etrade liable. hah - legally you have no foot to stand on. Submitting an offer is never a guarantee. I and others have tried to invest in numerous IPOs over the past year at etrade - and the success rate is very poor - usually in the neighborhood of 1% to 2% of all conditioanl offers submitted get allocated. thats a 1 in 100 or 1 in 50 chance !!! Please drop your holier than though - I am entitled to these shares or I will sue therm, take it to the supreme court, etc attitude. You reflect very badly on the rest of us here. So you didn't get any shares - so what, life goes on. Live it - and stop being bitter - you might live longer
I don't think enough has been said about the selection criteria for the "affinity" program. I've hoisted brewskis with a number of RHAT folks in the past, and I've had my share of contributions to Linux, but I never got the letter. I don't want to divulge my identity right now, but suffice it to say I feel I *deserved* to get the letter based on my past relationship with Red Hat. I don't know whether this was due to my failure to "make the cut", or due to some oversight on their part, or even maybe due to email lossage! (Were the "letters" sent only by email? That could explain a thing or two)
Does anyone else out there feel the same way I do?
Tsk. Tsk.
...
Look, I know what the chances of getting an IPO are, if you try through a broker who is not one of the underwriters. But E*Trade (E*Offering) IS ONE OF THE UNDERWRITERS. So, suddenly, my chances got from 1 to 2 percent up to 50 percent or higher.
I have other brokers. I know what that means.
So, if I were a nasty guy, I would have said: "Hmmm, looks like they screwed the affinity guys out of shares. Cool, more for me." - and then I would have done things to get the SEC to redo the IPO only for my class of investors, NOT for the Affinity group.
I've done things against my own economic self-interest before, whether we're talking AT&T and cable access, or many other stock holdings. This is a common behaviour in my family - we care about justice, not just for us, but for all. You may have heard of a Oliver Wendell Holmes, and he's pretty average amongst my relatives in the Holmes, Affleck, Asch, and Whitesell families. Numerous relatives have done the right thing in the face of fierce pressure to conform to the powers that be, and they even named the Asch Phenomenon after a great-uncle - that's where you get a crowd of people and have at least five people tell an obvious untruth - and people will believe it
When you have walked a mile in my shoes, you can criticize me. E*Trade has been deserving of all criticism, Red Hat has gone above and beyond the call of duty to help us out, and the SEC has done it's job, no matter what E*Trade will tell you.
When E*Trade can't even get their stories straight, lights should go on in your brain. If they didn't, you should NOT be investing. At some future date you will probably be snookered, and let's hope the perpetrators left an audit trail, or you're SOL.
OK?
Will in Seattle
First off - let me clarify something. I am not an overall supporter of Etrade. However, legally they didn't do a thing wrong here. I will agree they need to do a better job in getting their messages out - but that is their biggest problem - always has been - communication. For the affinity group - I think they have bent over backwards to make things work. Second - As far as why the reconfirmation had to occur - even if you put a buy at market - or buy at limit of $20 is - While you may not want to here this - it is a SEC requirement. The basic rule is whenever the terms of a deal change form when you submit your initial offer - you need to reconfirm your conditional interest. I will agree with you in the case of an increased range - or pricing over the range - this reconfirmation makes no logical sense to the vast majority of folks - it obviously does to the SEC. And they make the rules - Etrade is just follosing them. Third - Will, you are mistaken in what your chances of receiving an IPO at a firm who is an underwriter is - at least in the case of etrade. I have been investing in IPOs for quite a while - and over the course of the last year - the odds of an allocation at etrade were typically in that 1% to 2% range or less on many occasions. On some offerings - this was obviously greater - (usually those where it was a very poor stock coming out - or those where Etrade was serving as an affinity distributer like this one) - but even in those cases - your odds would never reach 50%. To more clearly illustrate this - etrade has approx 1.5 million accounts. In a typical IPO - they can expect between 5% and 10% of those accounts to submit a conditional offer. Thats 75,000 to 150,000 people. In redhats case - they underwrote about 270,000 shares. While the amount they underwrite doesn't alwasy equate with the amount they have to allocate (as this is determined by the lead underwriter - who in "hot" offerings will keep more shares for their own clients and give etarde and others less) - lets assume Etrade could distribute all 270K they underwrote (This is just the general public portion - the directed shares portion of the program is separate). That means they could give 2700 people 100 shares each. Even if only 5% of their accounts submitted offers then - you had a 3.6 in 100 chance of being allocated. Not great odds. And if you still think my figures are wrong - look at it this way. the new reconfirm window was open for roughly 25 minutes. About 1/3 of folks who entered orders in this timeframe received shares. if the window would have been open 2 hours as is normal - 1 in 15 people would have received an allocation if orders continued at the same pace. However, because the window was in the morning - at an unexpected time - the number of orders entered early on were low by comparison. so I still believe your odds were in that 3 to 4% range Again - their was never a guarantee of being allocated shares - so legally - you are not entitled to a thing. You may think differently - but in the long run you will be proven wrong
I got the letter, filled it all out a week ago and got denied. I decided not to call up and lie, and sat in agony as the stock shot up. After reading this message I called again, and they took my name and account, made me sit on hold for 5 mins, and then said, ok you are still denied.
oh well, it's just money. (actually I think I was in it for the braggin' rights more than the money)
-chris
So, if you didn't fill out the form with your trading history on it before the normal deadline (several days ago), you can't get in.
It's probably worth calling them and bugging them just in case you are on their magic affinity list (affinity members who "indicated before the deadline").
Sean
If the process is confusing, it's not your fault as an investor, it's E*Trade's. E*Trade would like you to go away, but insist on talking with a supervisor (after you get to a broker), starting each conversation with "I am an Affinity member".
Just because they goofed and misclassified you and told you to do the wrong thing, it's not your fault.
email sanfrancisco@sec.gov
Will in Seattle
So, I'm curious. How many shares did Red Hat mail to Linus as a gift? I'd be pretty pissed if they pimped the big L on this one. I'd have to think they could give him at least a couple K of shares as a nice gesture...
It's a strange world -- let's keep it that way
On the second day of trading prices have shot up again! They (Robert Young and Marc Ewing) both own over 600M in stock now......
Roger.
I just called e*trade and was told that this extension is ONLY for those people who placed an indication of interest at $10-$12, and then missed the 10 minute re-confirmation window when the IPO was repriced at $14.
So if that's you, get on the phone.
Those of us who received "Offer not suitable" from the screening page are still out of luck.
All in all, a very interesting and educational experience.