A@P; Amr &quot;Anthony&quot; Elgindy Discussion; Anthony@Pacific

Top 133. Sep 28, 1999 8:05 AM

» carolynhorvath - Dear Kirk,

I Love your D&D , Get brave dude and start making some pics for us ..You are SMART,AND FOLLOW THE MARKET,AND THE THREADS BETTER THAN MOST OF US..

HOW about Kirk's LONGS & SHORTS,

The worst that can happen is SI (will kick everybody off that Listens) to you.

OPEN YOUR ON SITE!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I NEED MONEY

I am kind of paranoid , IF THEY KICK ME OFF OF A SITE THAT I PAY FOR ,,,,,,,

ARE YA'LL GONNA SEND SI 'BOB' AFTER ME HERE

PSS. A@P A WHOLE BUNCH OF US THAT FOLLOWED YOU AND BELEIVE IN YOU ARE WAITING FOR SOME POSTS

thank you
kirk and a@p

carolyn & joe

-- posted by carolynhorvath

Top 134. Sep 28, 1999 8:38 AM

» carolynhorvath - SORRY KIRK, MPPP, GREAT SHORT

DOWN 3, MORE PLEASE.

TONY FROM BR, GOT ANY OTHER GOOD ONES BESIDES THE FATBOY, What do you think about KIDE, SHORT???

-- posted by carolynhorvath

Top 135. Sep 29, 1999 2:01 AM

» TONYBRIG - Dont follow Kide

Havent much time for research these days.
Not even up on latest on FATB.
Other games occupy most of my time.
Its 5am and Ive been up 1/2 hr.

VBOLHH

-- posted by TONYBRIG

http://www.siliconinvestor.com/stocktalk...

Top 136. Oct 6, 1999 4:05 PM

» carolynhorvath - A@P.. SI is having a vote on Anthony

-- posted by carolynhorvath

Top 137. Oct 6, 1999 4:32 PM

» TONYBRIG - Ha wonder how many subscribers S.I.. lost cause Anthony exit

sounds like B/S to me and that they know the
vote will put him back on and help them!

But I hardly ever went over there so I may be
wrong but ill take odds I aint and that he
wins the tally.

VBOLHH

-- posted by TONYBRIG

Top 138. Oct 6, 1999 4:51 PM

» KirkL - My Reply

Before I vote, I want to know

1) IF I post a link to his private site, will I get booted?
2) IF I post a link to a free site he posts at, will I get booted?
3) Why were posts telling others where Anthony went to for a temporary basis censored until he got his own site running? This didn't seem like a violation of the terms of Use. (Full Disclosure, I write for the site Anthony went to on his own and get paid $15 a month plus I am long their stock)

Until I understand the answers to these questions, I refuse to participate in a vote. I urge all to do likewise. I don't think we were told the real reasons Anthony was booted or what would cause us to have our membership suspended (this happened to many according to email I have gotten)

Perhaps I am totally wrong, but my questions on this issue in a PM to you were never answered.

Kirk Lindstrom

-- posted by KirkL

Top 139. Oct 11, 1999 1:32 PM

» JenL_3 - More on the A@P SI Vote

Two articles about Anthony@Pacific in WSJ. This one from 10/8/99:

Silicon Investor Puts the Fate Of Banned User Up for Vote

By CARRIE LEE

Anthony Elgindy, a short seller who was kicked off the Silicon Investor Web site because of his controversial postings, may be making a return. The site is putting his fate up for a vote of its 150,000 members.

The stock-discussion site http://www.techstocks.com launched the unusual maneuver earlier this week in a posting to its members. It invited users to discuss the merits of readmitting Mr. Elgindy and to cast a vote by midnight Friday by sending a private electronic message to the site.

"If this works well, and it's something that members seem to enjoy, then we'll consider a similar 'community appeals' process" for other users who are banned from the site, said Bryan Burdick, managing director of the site, in the posting announcing the vote. Each month, about five subscribers are booted from the $10-a-month service, which is owned by Go2Net of Seattle.

Silicon Investor's users have mixed views of the vote, which would in some ways allows a popularity contest to overrule the site's "terms of use" agreement, a set of rules imposed on users to, among other things, weed out abusive and promotional message-board postings.

"I don't think a vote is necessary. ... His method of operation should not be allowed. He's self serving," says Silicon Investor member Frank Rivera. Mr. Rivera, of Portland, Ore., has been a member since 1997.

Mr. Burdick, in an interview, said that winning his membership back in this week's vote won't excuse Mr. Elgindy from any terms of the user agreement. "[A member] will still be subject to the terms of use. If we should continue to use a voting mechanism, this is somebody's last chance. There's no second vote," he says.

Although he has detractors, Mr. Elgindy had been a popular figure on Silicon Investor, and Mr. Burdick says he has fielded a barrage of complaints since Mr. Elgindy was banned in late August. Before being banned, Mr. Elgindy was active on the boards, often posting scathing comments about companies whose shares, he believed, were being lifted by hype.

Support for Mr. Elgindy is evident on the message-board that was set up to discuss his fate. A review of the first 100 messages posted there show that individuals in favor of reinstating his membership outnumber people opposed by roughly 3 to 1. However, most of those postings center on the merits of holding a vote at all, or -- as message-board conversations tend to go -- are unrelated to the topic at hand.

Mr. Elgindy, 31 years old, of Del Mar, Calif., had long sought to cast himself as a watchdog on online promotion while at the same time making no secret of the fact that he aimed to profit by short-selling shares of the companies he had taken on. Short sellers borrow shares in hopes of profiting by repurchasing shares later at a lower cost to repay their loans.

Silicon Investor users earlier this year made Mr. Elgindy's online alias -- Anthony@Pacific -- among the most "bookmarked" names. (The site allows its users to use so-called bookmarks to keep track of the postings of specific message-board participants.) This week, the discussion about whether to bring back Mr. Elgindy has been Silicon Investor's most heavily used board. More than 680 messages have been posted since Tuesday.

Other popular stock-discussion sites also revoke the rights of users who violate their terms-of-use agreements. Yahoo! Finance http://www.quote.yahoo.com and Raging Bull http://www.ragingbull.com say they have never turned to a membership vote to allow a banned individual to return.

Blake A. Bell, a New York attorney who specializes in Internet law, says the voting concept has flaws. "I can't think of a less scientific poll. Are you likely to get the entire community's view?" he says. "It's certainly going to apply on a case-by-case basis. Where does the company draw the line?"

Mr. Burdick won't say specifically what caused the site to ban Mr. Elgindy and his wife, Mary, from the service. "Some [violations] sort of mount up over time, like spams, personal attacks, promoting other sites," he says. "That was more the case with Anthony."

Mr. Elgindy says, "The exact words were I violated the terms of use by advertising my [personal] site, which many people do on Silicon Investor, and by attacking certain people because they were targets of one of my trades. I'm so outspoken, I was at one point attacking Silicon Investor. ... It was the heat of the moment, I overstepped some boundaries."

Mr. Burdick says Mr. Elgindy contacted him about two weeks ago and asked whether there was an opportunity to reconcile their differences. "He's a very reasonable, rational guy," says Mr. Burdick. "We had good conversations. He understood why we did what we did."

Mr. Elgindy joined Silicon Investor in August 1998, and started his own message board, "Anthony@Equity Investigations, Dear Anthony," last November. Although his membership was canceled, and his ability to post messages revoked, Mr. Elgindy's message board remains accessible and actively used. His old postings remain on Silicon Investor, as does his user profile, which includes a link to his personal site http://www.anthonypacific.com

Mr. Elgindy came to Internet stock trading after a decade as a licensed securities broker. In the early 1990s, he was co-owner of a small, now-defunct San Diego brokerage firm that came under federal criminal investigation in connection with illegal stock trading. The investigation led to several convictions. Mr. Elgindy has said that he didn't know about any illegal activity and was never charged. In a court hearing, the federal prosecutor on the case acknowledged Mr. Elgindy's cooperation.

In 1997, the National Association of Securities Dealers, which regulates brokers, suspended Mr. Elgindy for up to a year from various brokerage activities and assessed him $30,000 for 1993 stock-trading violations that included improperly using a trading system set up for retail customers. Mr. Elgindy says his trading violations were inadvertent and came at a time when he was depressed by the criminal investigation involving his firm. Last year, Mr. Elgindy decided to leave the securities industry.

and this A@P article from 7/22/99:

An Online Maverick Sells the Internet Short

By JOHN R. EMSHWILLER

DEL MAR, Calif. -- Online chat rooms are crowded with legions of buy-happy day traders who have helped to push Internet stocks to dizzying heights.

Then there is Anthony Elgindy, one of the leaders in a sort of cyberspace countermovement -- investors who are trying to make money when Internet stocks fall, and sometimes actively working the chat rooms feverishly to make them fall.

One of his latest targets: Firstwave Technologies Inc., a small Internet software company, which announced a business deal with Microsoft Corp. on Monday. Firstwave's stock more than quadrupled to $8.675 on volume of 16 million shares, 5,000 times its trading volume on Friday.

Hearing the news, Mr. Elgindy swung into action. He and an online colleague sent e-mail messages to selected Internet stock traders suggesting that Firstwave shares be "shorted" -- which involves selling borrowed stock in hopes of replacing it later at a lower price.

Next, Mr. Elgindy issued a press release estimating that the Microsoft contract was for only about $100,000 of software, a relative pittance compared with Firstwave's annual revenue of $14.5 million. On Tuesday, Firstwave's stock fell back more than 25% to $6 on the Nasdaq Stock Market on volume of 4.2 million shares. It fell a further 13% Wednesday, closing at $5.25.

For Mr. Elgindy -- a 31-year-old native of Cairo, Egypt, who now resides near this Southern California seaside community -- Firstwave was one more adventure in a tumultuous, and sometimes controversial, stock-trading career. Before he went online, he both acted as a witness for the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, and was disciplined by the National Association of Securities Dealers, for stock-trading violations in 1997.

The past and present controversy surrounding Mr. Elgindy hasn't prevented him from attracting a loyal following. A recent list from Silicon Investor, a popular Internet stock-chat operation, shows that Mr. Elgindy, under the moniker Anthony@Pacific, has become its third most "bookmarked" name.

Certainly, with the recent roller-coaster ride for many Internet issues, Mr. Elgindy has been keeping busy with his focus on what he calls "overhyped, overvalued, fraudulent stocks."

Short selling is a risky form of investing. A trader borrows stock and sells it in the expectation that the price will drop; if it does, a profit can be made by replacing the borrowed shares with stock bought at a lower price. But traders can suffer a big loss if the price moves against them. Indeed, when it comes to volatile Internet stocks, one can get into "extreme trouble, extremely quickly," says John Fiero, a veteran short seller.

But Mr. Elgindy and his fellow Internet shorters say such volatility has profit potential. Each trading day, Mr. Elgindy prowls stocks to short as he sits in front of four computer screens in the first-floor study of his home. At his feet, lies his German shepherd guard dog Steef, while a pistol rests on a table behind him -- protection, he says, against death threats he has received over the years.

His online style can be abrasive. Recent Elgindy e-mails on Silicon Investor have referred to one company as "junk," another as an "overinflated pig," while a third firm was being run by "two little snots" who "make me want to puke." Fans laud his trading and stock-picking abilities and show him some unusual trust. Rob Rill, who runs a small consumer-finance company in Gainesville, Fla., says he wired $20,000 to Mr. Elgindy and asked the trader to take a short position on his behalf even though the two had never met, except online. Mr. Rill says he made a profit on the transaction.

In recent months, Mr. Elgindy has taken aim at such names as Amazon.com Inc., USA Talks.com Inc. and Findex.com Inc. Among other things, Mr. Elgindy says he looks for small, obscure firms ballyhooing ties with bigger, better-known companies.

In the case of Firstwave, fellow online short sellers alerted Mr. Elgindy to the company's announcement, which gave no financial information about the deal but talked about Firstwave being chosen as the "Customer Relationship Management solution" by a Microsoft unit.

Mr. Elgindy says he called both Microsoft and Firstwave, and determined that the software involved would produce about $100,000 in licensing revenue and about $18,000 a year in service fees. In one e-mail message, Mr. Elgindy called the Firstwave press release "A DECEPTION OF MASSIVE PROPORTION" and pronounced it "A Criminal Shame" that the announcement propelled the stock up so much.

Firstwave spokesman Stephen Luce says the company believes its press release was proper and accurate. While Mr. Luce declines to give a specific dollar value to the Microsoft order, he says the $100,000 figure is "in the ballpark."

Not all Mr. Elgindy's suggestions work out so well. An e-mail in late May declared that Healtheon Corp., an online health-care service provider, was "a pig [that] can't fly" at $80 a share. Anyone who made a short-term bet shorting the stock would have lost money, as the shares closed that day at $87. But since then, his call has looked on target, as Healtheon shares have steadily fallen, closing Wednesday at $61.9375 on Nasdaq.

Mr. Elgindy came to Internet stock trading after a decade as a licensed securities broker where he also specialized in short selling. In the early 1990s, he was co-owner of a small, now-defunct San Diego brokerage firm that came under federal criminal investigation in connection with illegal stock trading. The scheme led to several convictions. Mr. Elgindy says he didn't know about the illegal scheme and was never charged. In a court hearing, the federal prosecutor on the case acknowledged Mr. Elgindy's cooperation.

Mr. Elgindy says he has subsequently supplied information to the SEC and others about suspected stock frauds. Indeed, he was featured on a 1997 segment of ABC's "20/20" news program as someone trying to help clean up Wall Street.

In a 1997 civil stock-manipulation trial in Los Angeles federal court, Mr. Elgindy was the "killer witness" who helped the SEC win the case, says Irving Einhorn, the attorney for one of the defendants. However, Mr. Einhorn, a former head of the SEC's Los Angeles office, argues that if his client was guilty, Mr. Elgindy should have also been charged since he took part in the allegedly illegal trades. Mr. Elgindy says he did nothing wrong. An SEC spokesman declines to comment.

The same year, the NASD suspended Mr. Elgindy for up to a year from various brokerage activities and assessed him $30,000 for 1993 stock-trading violations that included improperly using a trading system set up for retail customers. In its decision, the NASD noted Mr. Elgindy's help in bringing "potential securities law violations to the attention of regulators."

Mr. Elgindy says his trading violations were inadvertent and came at a time when he was depressed by the criminal investigation involving his firm. Last year, Mr. Elgindy decided to leave the securities industry and stopped making payments on the monetary penalty from the NASD case. As a result, the NASD revoked his license.

Some of his fans see Mr. Elgindy's past dealings with law enforcement as a plus that gives him greater credibility in uncovering stock fraud. But others see it differently. "He is using his government connections to terrorize people on the Internet," says Joe Park, who as TokyoMex has long been Silicon Investor's most-bookmarked name.

Mr. Park is under an SEC investigation that he says was sparked by Mr. Elgindy, who recently started a private stock-chat Web site that charges up to $600 per month. "He came after me so he could open his own Web site," says Mr. Park, who has his own private Web site. Mr. Elgindy says that his only motive for sending the SEC some 1,600 pages of material about Mr. Park was to make sure that the SEC was aware of Mr. Park's activities. An SEC spokesman says that while the agency welcomes leads from online traders, nobody gets special treatment as a result. The spokesman declined to comment about the Park investigation. Mr. Park denies any wrongdoing.

Ironically, though Mr. Elgindy spends much time online, he says he still places all of his trading orders by phone through a live broker. If something goes wrong with an order, "I need someone to hang. You can't do that with an electronic system," he says.

......Jen

-- posted by JenL_3

Top 140. Oct 11, 1999 5:09 PM

» JenL_3 - A@P Back @ SI

This from 10/11 WSJ:

Ousted Commentator Regains Silicon Investor Membership

By CARRIE LEE

Anthony Elgindy won back his Silicon Investor membership, taking a solid majority in an unusual vote the stock-discussion site staged to decide the fate of the prominent short seller and online commentator.

Mr. Elgindy was booted off of the service this summer because of his controversial postings on Silicon Investor's http://www.techstocks.com message boards. He had often posted scathing comments about companies whose shares he felt had been lifted by online hype, all while making no secret of the fact that he aimed to profit by selling their shares short.

Shorts sell borrowed shares in hopes of profiting by repurchasing shares later at a lower price to repay their stock loans.

Bryan Burdick, managing director of Silicon Investor, said the vote was 435 to 268 in favor of Mr. Elgindy, 31 years old, of Del Mar, Calif. Just a slim fraction of the site's roughly 150,000 members took part in the vote.

Still, Mr. Burdick says Silicon Investor plans to explore a way to develop an ongoing appeals process for ousted users that will take into account the views of members. About five users are booted from the service each month because of violations of its "terms of use" agreement.

"We think its definitely worthwhile to continue to experiment with some type of appeals process for members who have been terminated," Mr. Burdick says. "Many members were quick to point out potential flaws with this experiment. We'll evaluate all of that and try to improve the process."

Mr. Elgindy, for his part, says he is pleased with the results. "I'm glad that people for the most part believe and like what I have to say on the Net," he says. "I have every intention of still offering some information to people on Silicon Investor; [It's ] where I started, I owe it to Silicon Investor."

He says that this time around, however, he'll abide by the rules. "I'll have to refrain from adding those extra comments here and there ... in order to live up to the standard that they're looking for," says Mr. Elgindy.

....Hmmmm....Jen

-- posted by JenL_3

Top 141. Oct 11, 1999 6:20 PM

» RandeS - Jen,

Jen,

An absolutely fascinating and incredible story. Democracy, Net-style. Anthony certainly has a colorful history, and, evidently, a devoted following. To some, he's apparently a "hero," while to others, from what's been printed, he might be considered a self-serving "stool pigeon." That's just the media, of course. Evidently, the rank-and-file at SI couldn't care less either way in their search for anyone or anything who might help them make a quick buck.

-- posted by RandeS