11–20 of 34 posts
He said he might sell more by end-year, but didn't guarantee that he'll do that ("He said he plans to sell as many as 75 million shares by year's end"). That would bring his sale percentage up around 18.3%.
The smoother way for executives to sell their substantial holdings in a company is to say they will sell X shares per year for Y years (typically in the name of diversifying one's holdings) and then put some independent third party (with no access to insider information) in charge of the exact timing of the individual transactions.
I believe the main reason why MSFT is stagnant is that the biggest shareholder (Bill) is selling this stuff constantly. His must have sold tens of billions of MSFT is the last few years. It is just the inverse of a company like IBM that is actively buying shares.
Bill's selling represents less than 100% and occurred over a decade, which is a much larger time interval. Nowadays mutual/hedge funds look at the company performance (earnings) and at the stock price and effectively pour in the capital whenever the P/E ratio drops below their threshold, thereby effectively compensating the effect of those sales.
When 1% of a company's shares changes hands each day you can't really blame Ballmer for stock price fluctuations.
In regard to IBM, when a company buys back its shares it effectively reduces the number of outstanding shares on the market (and thus it increases their rarity and therefore their price), but the money used for the buy-back could have been instead paid in dividends or used for an external acquisition. It is a management decision that partially says "we didn't find anything else better to do with the money than this", but it's too complex to be analysed in a comment's paragraph. The Ballmer transaction is on the market, investor-to-investor; it doesn't change the number of outstanding shares nor does it dilute the price.
http://www.ballotpedia.org/wiki/index.php/Washington_Income_...
This move is a little strange. It's a big chunk to sell all at once and some will interpret it as a de facto vote of no confidence in MSFT. The smoother way for executives to sell their substantial holdings in a company is to say they will sell X shares per year for Y years (typically in the name of diversifying one's holdings) and then put some independent third party (with no access to insider information) in charg…
I bet he pumps it into commodities, metals and markets like brazil that aren't devaluing their currencies.
I'm no expert, but this just screams doom to me. When someone inside the company sells their shares in this quantity it's _always_ before something big. I won't speculate at what is going on inside, beyond all the negative image lately, but it can't be good. And if he wanted to diversify his portfolio then he should buy some APPL! (Laughed at my own joke, too.)
It doesn't scream "doom" to me; Ballmer's sale looks like it was done mostly for tax purposes.
This move is a little strange. It's a big chunk to sell all at once and some will interpret it as a de facto vote of no confidence in MSFT. The smoother way for executives to sell their substantial holdings in a company is to say they will sell X shares per year for Y years (typically in the name of diversifying one's holdings) and then put some independent third party (with no access to insider information) in charg…
The insider selling to buying ratio has been over 2000 in recent weeks. This is likely less of a dire sign of MSFT's prospects than it is a condemnation of the US economy after Heli Ben's QE2. I bet he pumps it into commodities, metals and markets like brazil that aren't devaluing their currencies.
I believe the main reason why MSFT is stagnant is that the biggest shareholder (Bill) is selling this stuff constantly. His must have sold tens of billions of MSFT is the last few years. It is just the inverse of a company like IBM that is actively buying shares.
According to http://www.google.com/finance?q=msft , 1% of Microsoft shares changes hands each day. This means that every 3 months, on average, every Microsoft share changes hands once. Bill's selling represents less than 100% and occurred over a decade, which is a much larger time interval. Nowadays mutual/hedge funds look at the company performance (earnings) and at the stock price and effectively pour in the capita…
yes, but these are transactions that follow the pattern of the market. Usually they even out, with a few days having more sellers and on other days more buyers.
When you have a share repurchase program, you are basically giving a support for the market. It is hard for the stock to go much lower, because the company is always buying.
Bill and Ballmer, on the other hand, are selling shares. This is not good for the stock, even if spread over a long time.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
According to http://www.google.com/finance?q=msft , 1% of Microsoft shares changes hands each day. This means that every 3 months, on average, every Microsoft share changes hands once. Bill's selling represents less than 100% and occurred over a decade, which is a much larger time interval. Nowadays mutual/hedge funds look at the company performance (earnings) and at the stock price and effectively pour in the capita…
> 1% of Microsoft shares changes hands each day yes, but these are transactions that follow the pattern of the market. Usually they even out, with a few days having more sellers and on other days more buyers. When you have a share repurchase program, you are basically giving a support for the market. It is hard for the stock to go much lower, because the company is always buying. Bill and Ballmer, on the other hand,…
In a liquid market, somebody is always selling. And somebody else is buying. In order to have a transaction, you have to have both a buyer and a seller. As long as those balance out, the price remains stable. You only see wild swings in price when there are suddenly many more sellers than buyers, or several more buyers than sellers. That doesn't happen with these planned insider transactions, because as soon as a sale is announced, a dozen computerized arbitragers swoop in to buy up the shares they've just sold (as long as the market doesn't consider the insider sales to be a vote of no confidence in the stock).