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Red Hat Software Businesses

"The Word" from E*Trade About the RH IPO 440

Posted by Roblimo from the time-to-get-on-the-stick dept.
After digging through three horrible voice-mail menus I finally got through to an E*Trade customer service representative named Jehnon Johnson who gave me the latest official skinny on the Red Hat IPO (as of 10:45 a.m. EDT) for "affinity" customers. If that's you, please read on. Update: 08/11 05:22 (5:22 p.m. PDT) by H : It's up and running-it's around 45$ per share, a three+ fold increase.

"You must reconfirm your conditional offer," Johnson said. To do this, you log into your E*Trade account, click on "Account Services," then "Other Questions," and click on "e-mail" to send an automatic e-mail reconfirming your offer. You can do this at any time, but Johnson advises "...doing it as soon as possible. The stock is being priced today."

Another alternative, Johnson, said, was to wait. As soon as Red Hat sets its final offering price - Johnson said, "I think it has been set at $14 per share" - E*Trade will send e-mail to everyone who has opened an E*Trade account and has money in it earmarked to buy Red Hat shares. This is the one that could come out during any two-hour period, any time. If you haven't reconfirmed already or don't do so immediately, you may want to check your e-mail hourly.

One big catch: if you only have $1000 or $1200 in your E*Trade account earmarked for Red Hat stock purchases, you need to send more. NOW! As in wire it, in accordance with the instructions on the E*Trade site. Otherwise you will not get any stock, according to Johnson.

Important Disclaimer: Please remember that Slashdot is not in the business of distributing investment news, and that things can change rapidly on the day a company does its IPO. If you have a direct financial interest in the Red Hat IPO, you should contact E*Trade directly for exact instructions and the latest news instead of getting your information from Slashdot. - Roblimo READ THIS OK, here's the deal. The official letter from E*Trade was sent, but it contains the wrong info as to how to confirm. Go in to the Account Services, and they say click on Other Questions at the bottom of page. It's not there-instead click on e-mail us on the right navbar. Inside of there, choose the other option, rather then a pre-set option, and it will take you to yet another page. From there, click on e-mail us. That should do it.
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"The Word" from E*Trade About the RH IPO More

"The Word" from E*Trade About the RH IPO

Comments Filter:
  • There have been about a hundered comments explaining the lottery system, why don't you read them.
  • Seriously, you can trade in RHAT right now. However, only a market order is likely to work, limits may not fire.

  • I got the same message:
    RE: Public Offering Order RHAT. We were unable to allocate shares. Possible reasons: Offering priced above limit or high demand for shares.
    This really sucks! I finally made it through their phone system late this morning and reconfirmed my order. They said it was ok. I thought I was in, but I guess I was wrong. Well, are there ANY success stories here today?
    --
  • applied under the DIRECTED SHARES PROGRAM (ie had the LETTER)

  • I got mine just now after all has been over. Fortunately that Slashdot exists, to warn me of the problem ;-) Moreover, the mail didn't have a valid To: field. So it got filed into the SPAM folder by my e-mail sorting program. Fortunately I had the program set up in such a way as to display subjects of all mails.

    So, if you have a spam-filter too, check first whether the mail hasn't been filtered by it

  • Well, it went big, but all I got was three messages saying I didn't get shares allocated.

    No loss, but no gain.

    Maybe next time they'll allocate more to e*trade...
  • Gaaarrggh!! ditto here. Then the e-trade bot says to me:
    RE: Public Offering Order RHAT. We were unable to allocate shares. Possible reasons: Offering priced above limit or high demand for shares.

    I'm so sick of this, I'm almost glab it's over. I've never had anybody try so hard to screw me. Thanks for trying to do the right thing, Red Hat. I'll try not to be too bitter, although it makes me wanna cry that it's up over 200% right now.
  • I just got this alert:

    Subject: E*TRADE Account Alert

    ID XXXXXX Acct.no.: XXXX-XXXX RE:
    Public Offering Order 1100 RHAT We w
    ere unable to allocate shares. Poss
    ible reasons: Offering priced abovelimi
    t or high demand for shares. 0000

    I had jumped through the hoops (re-submitted this morning) and had the $$$ in the account, so they must've gone to the lottery.
  • ...that they still have NOT run the directed shares allocation, they expect to later on (maybe not today, though) and are still accepting directed share conditional orders.
  • same for me ! got 0 out of my 600 non invitee program :-((( [though I did do everything, monitor the pages, etc... I had hoped the 15 min windows this morning meant at least those making it would get at least 100 shares.. but sadly, not even !] I wonder if asking for 100 I would have got them... I'm still waiting the result for the invitee part... I hope that one will work out ok !!
  • Should have, but too late. Oh well, from what I hear, it went to lottery anyway.
  • I was able to get in at 9:30 Pacific time. You will have to supply info from the invitation.
    I feel humbled by this--if I do indeed make money from this, I will be generous to the Free Software Foundation.
  • Of course you don't. Moderators, please remove this crap, and people, don't listen to this guy.
  • Said friend also was told he had gotten into the database twice -- once as non-DS (that's what his rejection message came from) and once as DS.

    Perhaps that has happened to the people here who were DSers who got reject messages.

    We've wondered if re-confirming the order somehow screwed things up and made people lose their DS bits (or went in as a second, non-DS order in addition to the existing DS order).
  • August 11, 1999 1:17:25 PM ET
    Subject: Public Offering Order for RHAT
    RE: Public Offering Order RHAT. We were unable to allocate shares. Possible reasons: Offering priced above limit or high demand for shares.

    Oh well, guess I'll put my 1999 IRA contributions into mutual funds instead of Redhat....
  • Were you affinity or friends&family or other?
    (I didn't get any of my shares; i was affinity)

  • There have been about a hundered comments explaining the lottery system, why don't you read them.

    The math works out thusly:

    • shared allocated to DSP: 800,000
    • number of 'invitations': I've heard a max of 5000, roughly
    • round-robin method for DSP allocation assigns 100 shares at a time to all comers down the list until shares are gone That means that every single one of the people on the DSP list (and I guarantee you a fraction of those have money to invest) should have at a minimum 100 shares.

      Note that this information comes from E*Trade's website, as well as the invitation letter. If the shares are allocated round-robin, as they purport on their website, then everyone who wanted them within the DSP program should have some at $14.


  • Gimme a break. I see things go completely wacko with the telephone system on a fairly regular basis. In LA (310) I have OFTEN gotten "All circuits are busy" messages, and any natural disaster - whether it touches the phone system or not - causes such flurry of calls that no one gets through.

    If a busy resource is downtime on the 'Net, it certainly is downtime for the telephone as well!

    And both networks rely on the power grid, which even in a city like New York (or LA) is not as reliable as you'd think..

    But I can't say that I'm losing any sleep over carpet-bagging latecomers to the game getting bit by not understanding how the whole mess works.

    E-bay just sucks.
  • The email alert that E*TRADE said it would send out if the price changed appeared to have NOT been sent.

    Very irritated at this. If it wasn't for /. and my own double-checking I still might have missed the boat. Blah. E*TRADE. Blah.

  • I placed my indication of interest through E*Trade for 300 shares (no limit) during the original two-hour window, made sure I had sufficient cash in the account to cover it up to $14, reconfirmed my indication of interest this morning during the brief time they were accepting same, and still ended up with zero shares.


    What I'd like to know is specifically how the shares were allocated:

    Was it based partially on a percentage of the number of shares requested? If so would I have been better off requesting 30,000 shares instead of 300?

    Was it based on prior participation in IPOs through E*Trade. This is my first IPO with them, so it'd be interesting to find out the correlation for those who were allocated shares.

    How long you've had an account with E*Trade definitely did not play into it, as I've had an account there since shortly after they opened.

    If you went through E*Trade and did receive shares, please share information on your indication of interest and E*Trade account history with us.


    For those of us not connected in some fashion this whole thing looks to have been a large waste of time.

    Snowdog [mailto]

  • Yes, but we still don't have the shares in our accounts. This will happen later today. By then, it may just have dropped to $20 or lower :-(
  • I just called E*Trade to re-submit my conditional offer, and was told yet again that this is not a "normal" IPO, whatever that means. The guy I was talking to said that the opening to resubmit the conditional offer had just closed (this maybe 20 minutes after it showed up on the site). Supposedly (at least from this guy) the 2hr window has nothing to do with what's happening right now. Paraphrasing him: "If you're not in now, you're not in." Whatever. I'm in.
  • Me too. Smart Alert Message 1:18:44 PM ET.

    Subject: Public Offering Order for RHAT

    RE: Public Offering Order RHAT. We were unable to allocate shares. Possible reasons: Offering priced above limit or high demand for shares.

    My limit was $14.25, order entered 07:51 this morning for 1200 shares by e-trade representive M____ A_____ (poor guy doesn't deserve to get slashdotted. Yet.)

    My first guess is they screwed up the directed-shares bit.
  • I just got a personal phone call. This is a nice gesture, but email would have been nicer.
  • THIS IS A SCAM _ DO NOT SEND ANY MONEY

    I have dealt with etrade in the past on IPOs - this is not required. This guy is scamming you !!!!
  • Mellow out, Dax. AFAIK, it just means that enough people re-indicated interest that they now know they cannot give everyone the shares they asked for. Now they go to their allocation algorithm.
    -russ
  • this needs to be moderated waaaaaay up......that poll would be very intersting:

    I got the letter and the shares
    I got the shares but no letter
    I got the letter but no shares (tried)
    I got the letter but no shares (didn't try)
    I went blind reading 'letter' postings
  • More irritating -- for non-affinity applicants
    to the IPO, it looks like E*trade opened the
    conditional offers, and closed them again in
    under 15 minutes..All old conditional offers
    are void, and new ones cannot be placed. I'm
    on the phone with Customers service right now complaining. How were we supposed to make a 15 minute window?
  • I got the letter, but haven't gotten the shares yet :-(
  • Heh. Nice to see you again; haven't seen you much since early dancing-Makefiles alpha on linux-kernel.

    It could be that I was getting special treatment, but it was some random chirpy customer rep, not any of my contacts in E*Trade. So I doubt it.

    I also didn't get shares. None. At all. So if they were trying to avoid bad press, they stumbled a bit.
  • Ditto. I was reloading the Alerts box every couple minutes, never came. Reloaded the IPO center every 10 or so, managed to see the message there. Just checked my Alerts box again, nothing at all.

    Oh, BTW: You have to explicitly configure the thing to send alerts to your email addr, as if it were some special feature. If you don't do that, you get Alerts in the Alerts box only.

    E*Trade is not winning any friends here.
  • The new conditional offer on E*Trade [etrade.com] lasted about 20 minutes. E*Trade says RHAT priced at $14/share and only those who placed new conditional offers are eligible. I'd also like to point out that I got my account alert saying that the new offer was available *after* they were no longer accepting conditional offers. Luckily I had already placed a new offer at that point. But it still pisses me off.
  • Please *please* phone E*Trade and talk to a broker yourself to confirm. Mention the affinity program. I wouldn't trust email in a volatile and fast-moving situation like this.
  • I got my shares Woohoo!!!

    It opened up over 200%.

    I am very happy right now.

    Let's hope it holds for a month.
  • So now that Linux businesses are going public, will Slashdot have stock quotes? :) The Slashquotes.....

    ~afniv
    "Man könnte froh sein, wenn die Luft so rein wäre wie das Bier"
  • I get to the point where it says click on "other questions". I don't have that anywhere on my screen under account services. Etrade sends you these emails saying you will might have to reindicate interest, but keeps it a secret when or how.
  • You will probably be able to get the shares that you initially requested. E-Trade is probably holding a number of shares for this, and will make things right.

    Obviously, they were very poorly equipped to handle something like this. I wish RHAT had chosen to go about this in a diferent manner. An initial private placement or issuing options (the right to be at a certain price) seems like it would have been easier for all parties concerned.

    I am pretty positive that E-Trade has held on to a number of shares and is going to sort through this hole mess. In the future, do not do any of your *real* investing through an on-line broker. Pay the extra commision and establish a relationship with a full-service broker.
  • Had an interesting experience:

    Punched up my E*Trade account this morning to submit a new conditional offer, entered an offer for 300 shares. Around 12:20 received a notice that I had been allocated 100 shares. Okay, so some is better than none. Watched the stock open and start bouncing around.

    Then, about an hour later, got a call from an E*Trade rep to confirm my buy order! I had an outstanding buy offer of 100 shares at an opening price of $14, and did I want to confirm or cancel the order?

    Well, gosh, by this time the stock price was around 44 in my quote window, and my Account Positions screen claimed that I already owned 100 shares. I said (a little nervously) that I thought I had already confirmed the order, and could he please double-check for me? So he checked on his monitor and confirmed that 100 shares were in my account and I was all set. Then he apologized and explained that the SEC was making them reconfirm all of that morning's conditional offers. He was using a list of buyers that had been printed before the stock went on the market, so some people on the list had already confirmed their orders online.

    The interesting thing was that even though the stock was open and on the market, they were still confirming conditional offers that were made at the opening price of $14. As far as I know, that guy's still calling people.
  • I was one of the invitees, and as of 3pm EST,
    ETrade is still saying "hang in there... we
    haven't allocated the shares yet..." even though
    it's been trading for 3 hours now.
    I'm not cut out for this suspense...
  • Complaining to the SEC that it was hard to get into an IPO? It IS hard to get into an IPO. There ARE limited shares. They move FAST. There is NEVER a guarantee. Hello? This is not "Etrade's evil empire"...it's called investing
  • Well, it doesn't really matter how much E*Trade screwed up because they ended up using the lottery process anyway due to such high demand for the stock. I was legitimately "in" but didn't get any shares because my name wasn't drawn out of E*Trade's hat. Oh well, such is the market.

    I, too, am rather frustrated by all of this
    --
  • Well, I just got notified that they were not able to allocate me any shares :(

    I wonder how many people had the opertunity to participate in the redhat deffered shares problem. Obviously over eight thousand... Would be interesting if someone had an indication as to how many had the chance to participate.

    If you were one of the lucky ones, congratulations.. Oh well, guess I'll wait a few days for it to drop down and buy it anyway.
  • me too

    Did anyone in the affinity program get shares?
    Seems like a lot of people got the reject notice
    at one.

    I was pissed enough that I had to decrease my number of shares ordered because of the last minute price increase...
  • $55-1/16 A SHARE?!

    What utter and total bullshit. Bob Young's laughing all the way to the bank. Sure, maybe you made some cash too, but let's do the math.

    6 million overinflated overrated shares of RHAT starting at $12 each. That's $72mil. Now they're at $55. That's $3.3 *BILLION* IN STOCK if I'm reading all these zeros correctly.

    When will you FOOLS get this through your head? It doesn't matter if RedHat does or doesn't give back the community! You just made Bob Young and Co. $2.58 billion! And what happens when people start realizing that RedHat *ISN'T* worth $2.58bil under *ANY* circumstances?

    Give me a break; RedHat's pulled a fast one, people fell for it, and in the end, they're going to get screwed. Never before have I seen such blatant lying in an IPO, or such idiocy from the public. Excuse me, I'm going to be ill.

    -RISCy Business | Rabid System Administrator and BOFH
  • Intel already owns 4% of RedHat. The big guys get in early. I simply love watching technoids discuss Wall Street.

    Emotional buy or not, unless you're day-trading and familiar with the risks involved (and have a real job), don't buy an IPO.

    Carry on.

  • You forgot what happened to me, and many others here:

    I got no letter and no shares.
  • My first guess is they screwed up the directed-shares bit.

    While I see it as very likely that they screwed up, I'm thinking that the directed shares went to the lottery process because of high demand. The documentation on the site stated that this might happen, but I guess we can never really know with such terse alerts coming from E*Trade [etrade.com].
    --
  • ... working a bug in the capitalist system.

    No problem, see, because we are the people who build things. You just lean on them. Next we'll build some Dutch Auctions and open IPO processes, and that particular capitalism bug will evaporate.

    Deep down, I really don't mind making you rich as a side effect of getting to live in the open source world I want to live in. But it is a bug, and we will fix it.

    BTW, Rob Malda's probably made more from open source than you have. And he knows how to throw a better party. :)
  • They had to go to a lottery system for affinity shares meaning if you got anything, you got 100 shares. So more like $2,800 profit. Not bad I suppose.

    Gordon
  • Yeah, I just got the same message. I talked to an e*trade rep yesterday and from what I was told, the shares were alloted in groups of 100, meaning they did one pass through all applicants giving everyone 100. Then, if there were shares left, they made a second pass and gave anyone requesting more than 100 shares another batch of a hundred. Repeating the cycle until all the shares were doled out. I figured that under such a system I would be near a lock to get shares, but once again, I get screwed by the system.

    Dammit!
  • No, the underwriters repriced the IPO to make more money. Blame the money men.

    The initial public offering price of the 6,000,000 shares offered by Red Hat was priced at $14.00 per share by the managing underwriters led by Goldman, Sachs & Co.,

    RHAT news [yahoo.com]
  • OK, I just got off the phone with an E-trade broker (12:05 PM PDT). He confirmed what everybody else has been saying: affinity shares haven't been allocated yet. But I thought to ask a more interesting question, and he answered it:

    Q: How many people have expressed interest in the affinity program?

    A: Red Hat sent out 8000 e-mails. 12K E-trade customers have expressed interest in the IPO.

    What does this mean to YOU? Red Hat allocated 800K shares and sent out 8K e-mails. E-trade allocates 100 shares each, then parcels out the leftovers. That means that affinity program members are guaranteed to get at least 100 shares each. You will get them at the initial offering price of $14, regardless of what they're selling for right now (and anybody who watches IPOs can also guarantee you that, while tomorrow's price may not be as high as today's peak, it's not going to be $9 unless the Red Hat prez pulls an Eagle Computer).

    So stop whining, kiddies.

    Oh, P.S. Never heard of Eagle? 10 or 20 years ago they celebrated a super-successful IPO. The president had a lot of champagne, got into his shiny new sports car, and drove into a tree. The company didn't do too well after that. :-(

  • If you get IPO shares and flip them in less than 30 days, your broker will probably not let you in on future IPOs (unless you have a super-phat account with them).
  • I can't believe this. I jump thru every hoop, dotted every i, crossed every t. I was told by two different brokers I was in.

    Then, after the stock was trading in the 40s, I called Etrade to confirm I had RHAT. They said, sorry, we are still allocating the stock. We won't be able to tell you until later. What!?!?! Waiting until after the stock goes up three fold the allocate? That means if RHAT goes up, allocate it to friends. If RHAT goes down, allocate to suckers.

    Then I find out that I didn't get my allocation. I'm pissed.

    This is utter Bullshit.

    Quack
  • Hello,
    I remember a while back (I can't find the link now) there was a web page detailing the ordeal with etrade and this redhat fiasco. I am very pissed off right now and i would like to get something done. I rember the web page had a lot of info on it. I think that this IPO has been handled so poorly that it is laughable.


  • Bob Young holds 9.1 million shares, making his share worth around $400 million.

    The largest share holder of the company (22.5%) is actually Frank Batten Jr. (chairman of Lexmark Communications) who holds 15 million shares for a value of around $660 million
  • I want to know, did anyone actually get any shares, or are the reports I'm seeing about the DSP shares not being allocated at all correct?
  • ... because they are getting $70 million and the insiders get $200 million of "money on the table".

  • Has anyone here actually called E*TRADE? Two of my DS friends have and both were told that the directed share allocation hasn't happened yet and that they're still taking orders/reconfirmations for directed shares folks.

    It's my bet, then, that all the rejection notices that DS people got are bogus, probably because parts of E*TRADE's computer system don't distinguish between DSers and non-DSers.
  • Yes, but that means that redhat gets more money for selling their shares.

    Unless you think this isn't a good thing?
  • So it was the SEC that made E*Trade force people to reconfirm?

    I guess complaining to the SEC won't do much good.
  • Date: Wed, 11 Aug 1999 07:28:55 -0700
    From: #IPO
    Subject: RHAT IPO Update
    -----------------------------DO NOT REPLY TO THIS
    EMAIL------------------------------------------- ----------------------------
    ----

    "Important Notice to Participants in the RedHat Affinity
    Offering"

    The offering price for the RedHat initial public offering
    has been set at $14 per share. This is outside the original $10-$12
    expected price range for the offering. BECAUSE THE OFFERING HAS PRICED
    OUTSIDE THE EXPECTED PRICE RANGE, YOU MUST RECONFIRM YOUR PREVIOUSLY
    TRANSMITTED CONDITIONAL OFFER IN RESPONSE TO THIS ACCOUNT ALERT IN ORDER TO
    PARTICIPATE IN THIS OFFERING.

    To reconfirm your conditional offer:
    * Log into your E*TRADE account and click on the ACCOUNT SERVICES tab.

    * Click on OTHER QUESTIONS at the bottom of the page. Click on e-mail
    in this sentence:
    * Send us an email from there with the following subject line: RED HAT
    IPO CONFIRM

    We understand that some affinity purchasers will not have
    the opportunity to reconfirm their conditional offers immediately after
    pricing. As a result, we will provide affinity purchasers with a period
    after pricing during which you may reconfirm your previously transmitted
    conditional offer.

    -----------------------------DO NOT REPLY TO THIS
    EMAIL------------------------------------------- ----------------------------
    -----------
  • Except that the underwriters don't get to keep the "extra" money. RedHat will get the $14/sh (minus the commission that RHAT pays to the syndicate).
  • I called the super-secret special directed shares number, punched in my pin, and was informed that the initial "no shares allocated message" *was in error*. They haven't done the directed shares allocations yet. So don't panic just yet!
  • Gee. I got mine at 10:30. It had the same originating timestamp as yours, +- a few seconds. And here's the cool part: the Alert didn't show up until the mail did. WTF? Obviously the Alert is somehow tied to the Exchange server in question (which is a pile of crap, as we all know). Is that stupid, or did the universe just invert?
  • Whatever, man. Hasn't school started yet? The principal is probably looking for you.
  • OK, Slashdotters, time to get our shares back.

    If everyone who DID NOT get the shares through E*Trade complains, the Securities and Exchange Commission has to investigate it.

    So, http://www.sec.gov/ is the place to go.

    Don't let E*Trade scare you off by mumbo jumbo.

  • Sounds like both the affinity program and the open market went to lottery (at least on E*Trade) and nobody got more than 100 shares.

    Unless you have a $5mil account with G.S.

    Which I doubt.
  • If all those complaining about RH up-ing their share price would have studied up (oops, studying
    is a bad word), then you would have realized that almost all hot IPOs become effective above their
    initial range.

    The reason for this is that if RH would have priced at $12, they would have gotten less money
    out of the IPO (and more would have gone to the suits on wall street). Why shouldn't RH take
    advantage of the hype and raise a few more bucks on this round of financing?

    Who was supposed to be primary beneficiary of this IPO, the company or some hackers who were
    too lazy to study up and research the process? RH the company benefits from up-ing the IPO price
    and it's in their best interests (and probably in the best interests of most of their true "friends")
    that they were able to raise more money in this round of financing to help them support more
    Open Source projects.

    Complaining just because you don't have a few more bucks in your pocket is whining. You lost out
    because you were too lazy to study up, plain and simple. You are the same type of people who sue
    others because you are unable to accept blame for your own stupidity.

    The OS movement benefits more by having RH having more money to spend on OS projects than
    you having more money to spend on yourself.

    Having said all that, often directed share programs take up to 1 day to clear, so if you get
    off your butt and call E*trade, you might just find that all you have to do is throw in a few
    more bucks to get your shares. But from what I understand, it probably went to a lottery anyhow
    so odds are that you just have to blame the dice or the Random number generator.

    Wouldn't it be ironic if E*trade used an open source RNG (since most of them are) to pick the
    lottery winners. Sweet justice... whiners blame open source for failure to get RHAT IPO shares.
  • I thought the magic letter would help, but now I wonder if the odds might have been better in the general E*Trade pool, rather than the directed shares pool?

    Woulda been nice if they did the lottery on the directed shares first, then moved the "losers" to the general pool for a second chance.

    I wonder how many letters they sent out... there were enough shares for 8,000 people to get 100 each in the program, and I would guess that a LOT lost out this morning during the reconfirmation thing... Huh. I guess asking Red Hat about the # of letters sent might prove interesting. Unless it was WAY above 8,000 I'd say that E*Trade did in fact screw something up.
  • Right, but I'm not the one complaining and blaming Redhat. I'm just pointing out that they put the management of this deal in the hands of the underwriters, that's all. They didn't wake up this morning and decide to screw all the $1200 letter holders by pricing the offer up $2. They checked the tea leaves and decided they could push for an additional ($2 x 6,000,000) $12 million.

    Yes, this is good for Redhat, bad for joe coder who barely has $1200 to buy shares and hasn't ever dealt with all this before.
  • I find it most bizarre that in a world where incredible riches are made and destroyed in a matter of seconds, that transactions be carried over such an unreliable medium as the internet.

    Dont flame me now. I love the net just as much as the next guy. But this network is one big pile of copper and fiber thrown together as need be, and patched up to "work" most of the times. When I see people complaining that they did not receive alerts fast enough or yadi yadi yada, it just makes me think that they're lucky to have received it at all.

    This is something that will have to be addressed soon. Telco's are expected to offer near 100% uptime (When was the last time the phone went down except when a natural disaster ripped the network to shred) ? But we see sites handling ungodly amount of money go down all the time. (E-bay anyone ?)

    Then, I chuckle. The net is paying back all those who invaded it to make a quick buck. And I go back to sleep thinking that it all balances.

    Point is : You're using an unreliable-best-effort-network to conduct transaction. EXPECT these things to happen.

    'nuff said.

    Sun Tzu must have been running Linux...
    - Hold out baits to entice the enemy. Feign disorder, and crush him. (Sun Tzu, The art of war)

  • I just spoke with the Red Hat IPO center at E*TRADE. If you got the "no shares for you!" message, this was a mistake. The directed shares have not yet been allocated. All the information the operator had was that they are in the process as we speak, but the alert message was in error.

    --
    Ian Peters
  • I tried to put in a new conditional offer at 10:50 EST and found they were no longer accepting them. The message I got from E*Trade saying that I had to do so had a time of 10:36 EST on it.

    I feel so screwed over.

    Fourteen goddamn minutes and I missed my chance to get in on the IPO I've been waiting a month for (and for which, incidently, I opened an E*Trade account in the first place). I can't believe they're going to get away with this kind of bulls***.

    Anyway, I put in an offer for shares at $20, hoping to get some before the stock skyrockets. This is the last stock I'm using E*Trade for, though; those #*$&%# ain't getting another cent of my money.

    I am *so* angry right now.

    ----

  • I see a lot of people (me included) who requested shares under the Affinity/Directed Shares/Red Hat sent you a letter group. None of us got anything. Did anybody who got the letter actually get shares?!?! Is there any way we can find out from E*Trade how many people got shares and how many didn't?

    ----
  • I'll second that! Their share value is back on the rise, and (from what I understand) was about the only IPO to do well today. Blockbuster, the other "hot" IPO, was a catastrophe, doing worse than Be, Inc!

    That Red Hat have actually gained, and gained by dollars not cents, over their first trading price is extremely encouraging. Well done to Red Hat and all who invested in it!

  • You signed up for 9,000 of 800,000 shares? That's 1-1/8% of the total "directed" offering! You greedy bastard... no wonder. :-)

    Note: This is my lame attempt to introduce some levity into the situation. I seem to have also lost out on this deal. Ah well.
  • Call them. They called me at 1:30 CST (less than 2 hrs ago) to make sure I had submitted my indication of interest. You may still have time; call the IPO support line. That'd be more effective than complaining here. :-)

  • YAY! (Score:2)

    by Gleef ( 86 )
    Thank you for this timely info!

    ----

  • E*Trade will not help you if you're not an affinity customer. I just spoke to three customer service reps -- the conversations went like

    "The window was open approximately forty minutes, between 10:05AM EST, and 10:50AM EST."

    I say, "Then why did I get an alert at 10:38 AM? Wouldn't you agree that's an unreasonable amount of time to notice, and react?"

    "Well, sir, ...I can have a manager call you at the end of the day. The SEC required that drop all old conditional offers, and start again."

    "Yes, but was it too much to ask that you notify us more than 10 minutes before the offering closed? I'm extremely pissed off!"

    "..."

  • Red Hat's IPO seems to have been the only success story of today. The other "hot" IPO (Blockbusters) seems to have proved a little cold. It did worse than Be, Inc!

    As for the other, tiny IPOs, one was delayed, some scraped a respectable showing, others fell through the floor.

    That only goes to show - Open Source -IS- superior to proprietary products, even amongst the suits.

  • There was an "alert" posted last night at 10:10pm, saying that if it prices outside of the original range of $10-$12, then all conditional offers must be re-submitted. I called this morning before it priced, and asked the rep "If I indicated interest 'at the market' then do I need to re-submit my IOI?" and she said "No, only if you set a price limit." so I relaxed.

    Then I saw it price at $14, and I thought "hmm... let's double-check this thing" and I called the IPO support line again - this time the guy said "No, you must re-indicate interest no matter how you indicated the first time - let me get you to a broker." So I waited on hold, nervously, and finally got through. He confirmed my request, I thanked him, and I hung up.

    Re-loaded the IPO bulletin page, and it said that all conditional offers were closed.

    Damn, that was fast. Remind me *never* to become a day-trader. I'm not cut out for this.
  • And the shares finished around $52.06. Congrats to everyone, and thanks for proving all my doubts wrong. At least, so far. :)

    Now to see what Red Hat does with the publicity and money this is generating.

  • Hope you don't mind me piggy-backing on your score:3, Bruce. :-)

    E*Trade just called me (1:30pm CST) and said that they were calling all the affinity program participants, to make sure that they had re-confirmed. She said that the message I got stating zero allocation was in error, and that allocated shares should show up by this afternoon...

    Fingers crossed! Maybe I should have said "um... no!" and then upped it to 5000 shares. :-)
  • They typically don't open an IPO to inexperienced traders?

    Not to flame people here. I'm learning from this sequence of events too, but the amount of folks saying E*Trade sucks, let's hack their site and I'm getting screwed may be EXACTLY why they had the kind of tests in place that they did. Folks with big bucks and experience in trading probably
    a) have been around long enough to understand the way these things work
    and
    b) won't feel screwed and start looking for revenge if they miss the window on this one specific equity.

    Hope everyone gets rich though!

    rw2

  • Call E*TRADE to re-confirm directed shares program (Score:3)

    by Verement ( 34794 ) on Wednesday August 11, 1999 @06:34AM (#1752457)
    If you are an open source community invitee for directed shares, you should call E*TRADE immediately at (888) 707-8680 x4263 to re-confirm your Conditional Offer. E*TRADE has also been calling people who placed Conditional Offers to re-confirm. Don't feel upset that the web site only allowed a brief window to re-confirm online; this was only for the public shares offering, not the directed shares. You will have to use the phone (or wait for them to call you) to make sure you can still indicate your interest. Don't wait for them to call -- call now!
  • Ditto for me - my account balance shows "$ " - not even $0.00, just "$ "

    Looks like E*Trade got Slashdotted? I guess this was one of the few ways I could have participated in an IPO, but geez... I think I better look elsewhere to do any serious online trading. I've tried to give them the benefit of the doubt, but it's getting extreme.

    On the other hand, I've had good luck on the phone with them. Maybe they should change it to "P*Trade?"
  • Like everyone else (it seems) I saw the notices this morning, first telling me that I needed to reconfirm the market order (what do they think "market order" means exactly?) and then the notice telling me that I had gotten no shares.

    I never got any email from E*Trade -- I still haven't.

    Well, I was in the middle of posting to slashdot about this when I got a phone call from someone at E*Trade asking me if I still wanted to buy shares at the offering price. I said that I had just checked my account, and the notices seemed to be telling me that it was too late, and that I had gotten no shares.

    He sounded uncomfortable and said, ``um, well, it seems that some people got those notices by accident.'' So, I re-confirmed my order, and am still waiting to hear how many shares I got, if any.

    I asked him if there was any chance that I would be allocated more than 100 shares, given how many people were participating. He said that it was likely that I would get more than 100, but he didn't want to guess how many.

    One of my friends talked to them later in the day, and the rep couldn't tell him whether his confirmation had gone though, because E*Trade's internal system wasn't responding.

    They sure have their act together. And they've got a hell of an infrastructure too! I'm so impressed!

    It's just amazing to me that a full day of trading has gone by, and E*Trade hasn't yet told me how many of the shares I asked to buy I was actually allowed to purchase.

    Once this is all over, I am certainly going to try (again!) to close my E*Trade account. If you don't plan to use E*Trade again, then you should do the same -- if you don't, they'll just continue bragging about their artificially inflated customer count.

    (And having open but unused accounts at financial insitutions is generally a bad idea: if they make some stupid mistake, like draining your account with service charges, they can screw up your credit rating for you in ways that are difficult or impossible to repair. I know many people this has happened to.)

  • Well, I just got the message, and was pannicked, as there's no 'Other questions' box.. After sitting on hold a half hour I was able to update my 'indication of interest'. I am one of those who got 'the letter', which I think means we've got more time to update our indications..

    But one thing thats interesting, and probably screwed alot of people... E-trade's mail servers sat on this mail for nearly a half hour! Headers show it sitting on mx3.etrade.com, arriving there at 7:29 (PST), and then not arriving at the next hop (my server) untill 07:56. I think if E-trade is going to make you do jump through hoops in 15 minutes they should ensure their mail servers can do things in less than 30!

    -- Greg

    PS: I just got called by E*trade regarding updating my profile. I imagine they are calling everyone with 'the letter' who indicated interest. I think they are doing a good job of responding to their customers. As for those without 'the letter' who just got scewed by a slow mail box.. well I hope they'll fix it in the future.
  • Yep, welcome to the capital marketplace. Same thing happened when my company went public last year. The IPO was priced the day of the offering at a couple bucks higher than the range that had been set for 3 months. This obviously sucks if you are a small investor with just enough to cover 100 shares. On the plus side, it means the underwriters are confident about the deal and are upping the price.

    This is, unfortunately, the nature of the beast. The market is so fickle, that conditions fluctuate daily. Some IPO's are postponed if the market conditions are really bad. Some are priced down.
    It's too bad that so many here are running into this for the first time and getting such a bad taste in their mouths. Something tells me though, that e-trade could care less because they have customers with $100k in their accounts that they will take care of, and those of us who broke open piggy banks to scrape $1200 together who would probably never otherwise play in the market are a much lower priority.

    It sucks, but them's the breaks.

  • E-Trade just called me (Score:3)

    by Bruce Perens ( 3872 ) <bruce@perens.com> on Wednesday August 11, 1999 @06:52AM (#1752527) Homepage Journal
    E-Trade just called me, said I needed to re-confirm, and switched me to a broker. The hold music had an announcement that they were no longer accepting Red Hat offers, but of course that wasn't meant for affinity customers. There was a several-minute wait to get to the broker.

    Thanks

    Bruce

  • The IPO will start moving as soon as trade opens. I bet it will take a minute or less. There are institutions and quick-traders in this, you know, and they have already placed their limit orders.

    Bruce

  • Unless you don't care whether you get shares or not, confirm anyway.

    ----
  • It's open, trading at 41. My shares are not in my account yet.
  • As of 15 minutes ago, Red Hat stock seems to have been publicly tradable. The online chart from Netscape is now showing.
  • Oh, I'll just add that anyone on the IPO may have become rather richer than they were. It became publicly tradable at $46, which is a bit of a jump from $14. :) It's now about $43.
  • I was part of the affinity program, and just got word that I received no shares. Looks like even the affinity / DSP went to the lottery.

    Bummer.
  • It's open, now. Came out of the IPO at $46/share, rose to $47 and then fell to $43 per share. Those who got in on the IPO, with a lot of shares, made a lot money. Those wanting to buy shares now, might do better to wait until later in the day, in case the price falls a bit further.

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