Thursday, October 9, 2008

Bad Timing

Bad Timing

After six years at Shugart you would imagine that I accumulated a decent amount of stock options… to be truthful a few months after I joined the company... I received a packet from Sunnyvale… I was living in Paris at that time… indicating that I was granted stock options to the tune of five hundred shares… I was elated because thinking European five hundred shares is a lot… I delayed any discussion on stock options until I talk to my boss in person…
Then a few months later I was informed that we were being acquired by the giant Xerox… and that my 500 shares would be converted to three hundred and forty Xerox shares… That was the time I realized that five hundred shares was very little… and it was too late to change it…

A few years later when I was at Maxtor I made sure I was granted sufficient stock options…. several tens of thousands… and I held on to them quite q while… the company was doing well and I loved my work… then when the stock tripled I decided to sell most of my stock… The shares were valued at $14.5 and rising… so before going on a trip I was about to take… I gave a sell order at fifteen dollars… and signed all the papers necessary… the date was August 1 1991… two days later Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait… and Maxtor shares traded at three dollars… and never reached the teens…

Bad timing…

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