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…
Ballmer sells 20% of his MSFT holdings
21–30 of 34 posts
Re: Ballmer sells 20% of his MSFT holdings
#22Seems like a pretty big bet that the value of MSFT won't increase by... eh... 70 cents?
Re: Ballmer sells 20% of his MSFT holdings
#23I'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.)
Re: Ballmer sells 20% of his MSFT holdings
#24I 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.
Re: Ballmer sells 20% of his MSFT holdings
#25This 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 sales don't seem likely to be tied to insider info, but may be viewed as an admission of agreement with the ho-hum view of most outsiders.
Re: Ballmer sells 20% of his MSFT holdings
#26Earlier 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,…
This statement shows a common misunderstanding of finance.
The market cap of a company represents the market's best estimate of the value of that company. When a company does a share buy-back, the company loses money and destroys stock. The current value of the money used matches the value of the stock destroyed, and so the market cap should be reduced by the amount of stock destroyed. Therefore to first order effects, the result is that the share price should remain constant. (There are second order effects where some value is transferred from stock holders to option owners, which indicates that the share price should go down.)
Re: Ballmer sells 20% of his MSFT holdings
#27This 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…
Well, he'll be saving $65M in capital gains taxes by selling this year before the rate increases to 20%. No doubt that was a consideration.
Re: Ballmer sells 20% of his MSFT holdings
#28This 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.
Re: Ballmer sells 20% of his MSFT holdings
#29This 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.
Re: Ballmer sells 20% of his MSFT holdings
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Yeah, because nothing says "I condemn the devaluing of this currency" like asking for 1.5 billion of it right as said devaluing is happening.