Mark Cuban backed Sharesleuth.com is out with its first expose on a company called Xethanol.com. And as promised, he’s disclosed that he’s had a short position in the stock; by the looks of it, he’s been short for some time:
(Disclosure: Mark Cuban, the majority member of Sharesleuth.com LLC, sold short 10,000 shares of Xethanol’s stock at a time when the price was around $12.65. Cuban also has sold short about 25,000 shares of UTEK Corp.(UTK: AMEX), a Florida company that is a large Xethanol shareholder.)
Gary Weiss, who’s been wary of Mr. Cuban’s project, has a piece out on the site’s first effort and notes the interesting likely timing of the short sale:
Sharesleuth was established on July 1, and it was first announced by Cuban in a post on his blog on May 31. This means that the target of the first story was already in the cross-hairs at the getgo, as was Cuban’s position.
If that trade was placed on or before May 12 [when the stock was last around 12.65], which seems pretty darn likely, it was a wonderful trade. Share prices have been on the decline ever since then, and was hurt still further by the Sharesleuth article…..
Makes you wonder how much of the rest of Cuban’s short porfolio is under examination by Sharesleuth at this very moment. All legally!
This may be a pretty shoddy way of practicing "investigative journalism" — a real blot on the profession, as a matter of fact — but it certainly is going to make a billionaire richer. And as Mark Cuban once put it, it is the "right" thing to do.
Mark Cuban’s Excellent Trade – gary-weiss.com
Tags: Mark Cuban
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