The Shorts and St. Joe

http://www.futureofcapitalism.com/2011/01/the-shorts-and-st-joe

"St. Joe: Short Sellers Win Round One as SEC Noses Around" is the headline of a Wall Street Journal Deal Journal item about the Florida real estate concern St. Joe that we wrote about back on October 14 in the post headlined "Einhorn Versus Berkowitz." If you had bought the stock back on October 14, at about $19, or in November, when it was down around $17, you would have made some money — the stock closed yesterday at about $23 a share and in pre-market trading this morning is down to around $21 a share. On October 13 Mr. Einhorn had announced the stock was worth $7 a share. It's somewhat remarkable that the Journal could characterize this course of events as a "win" for the short sellers.

Or maybe not so amazing — the SEC "nosing around," though it's not a charge, much less a conviction, will no doubt scare some investors away. It's the same technique the short-sellers used against MBIA — get the government involved to help erode investor confidence in a company.

If you are interesting in the underlying value of St. Joe, the comments thread on our original item (here and here) is worth a read.

by Ira Stoll  |  Jan 11, 2011 at 8:44 am Related Topics:  SEC receive the latest by email: subscribe to the free futureofcapitalism.com mailing list