Anybody else loose there a$$ on this?

I bought at $64.  Last check it was at $0.29.

Someone should go to jail for this one.

I didn't have a big stake, and it's easy to shrug off as my overall return is still positive.  

I really feel for the working folks whose retirement nest egg was destroyed by the malfeasence of the officers of this company.

Here's to Enron's CEO, officers and BOD.  [-!-]

I've been watching the burn... quite entertaining but that's because I'm on the sidelines on this one.  Been there before, though.

You will probably be able to recoup some of your losses in the class action suits against their accountants, et.al., which are sure to follow.

Lost a little...

...anyone out there sell short on it and make a buck?

Yeah, this Enron thing is really shocking to me.  I really admired their operation and business after seeing it profiled in the news during the California energy crisis in early 2001.  

Gray Davis was trying to sue Enron and other energy traders who were providing his precious state with electricity, rather than make a tough leadership decision to actually force Kali residents to pay fair market value for it.

So paid attention to the $80 Enron stock for a while until the price controls were passed, and then it went off my radar.  I looked at it again in October, and saw it was at $30 or so, and kind of laughed like "oh how the mighty have fallen".  It never really entered my mind to short it, as I didn't know the story.

Then in November I saw it get totally hammered every trading day.  I look at that chart and just feel sorry for all those people who hung onto it, all those Enron employees who bought into their company's worthless stock for retirement.  Poor bastards.  

But it looks like Enron management fooled smart-money fund managers, and bankers like Citicorp and JP Morgan as well.

Diversify, diversify, diversify!

From some of the info now coming out about Enron, it sounds like a few people need to spend some time in Club-Fed.

YEp
But your public utility NEED's competition
the monopolies need to be broken up so people have a choice of "energy provider".
I dont know about anyone else but I have not noticed any big drop in my electric bill.

BTW the pension funds of these former electric companies used to be very secure and stable and have good investments until they were taken away from public control and broken up and the pension funds were cleaned out and replaced with companies like ENRONs own stock which was fine as long as the stock remained high.....
SOMEONE made off with the investments or funds that had leveraged those funds and is probably sunning in barbados watching the former employees dreams and futures go up in smoke on FNN. Hopefully someone like the SEC or FTC will get involved and prosecute the scumbags that did this.

I feel your pain. Virtually all my stocks, heck, my entire portfolio got hammered this last year. I lost almost 35%, about 3 years worth of growth.
My 401k lost almost 3% and I transferred everything to cash. The bank's measly 2.5% is doing better than the market itself.
There's really nowhere to put my money except under the mattress.

Good luck to you,
John

Enron...

In 2000 I did a consulting gig there.

Worked for one of the most inhuman jerks I've ever met. He would scream at people as if he were a Taliban and they were female.

I thought, "How can management allow this guy to manage anyone in this company? He would be fired at a "real" company"

As I walked down the hall from my office there were lines of cubes full of various contractors and consultants. I told my compadres that I could not believe how few of these people were working, most were playing games on their computers or surfing the net..(forums hopping like me right now).

Anyway, I told my bride "Ya know, that place has some real management problems."

I feel for the people that worked there...except for that one....

My wife is damn giddy about it.  I, along with almost everyone else in my group, got laid off from Enron in March of this year, and at that time my wife said to me "A pox on Enron.  We will live to see them fail."  Of course, she was joking about it, but it's damn spooky that it came true.  

She doesn't like them because they had intended to lay us off on Friday, but since my wife and I were at the hospital having a baby, they decided to wait three days until Monday to do it.  A real class act, I tell you... [rolleyes]  I got the page that I had a mandatory meeting that Monday as we were headed to lunch to celebrate the new baby with our family.  Anyway, we at least got a great severence package, but it still made me mad because I was rated as one of the top 15% of employees during our annual review, yet got literally no bonus and no raise, but was told I would be moving into a mangement position if one became available because I had what it took.  I never got the chance, and have been moving from contract job to contract job since I was let go.  My stock options strike price was whatever it was on Dec. 29 of 2000, which I believe was $87.25.  I guess I'm glad I didn't get to stick around long enough for those options to vest.

And what Coz_45-age-caliber said about their management is correct.  I know EXACTLY who he's talking about when he talks about the screaming manager.  Enron, as powerful as they were, had some of the most shortsighted and idiotic management I have ever seen.  Broadband was doomed to failure because they had extremely weak management and absolutely no direction.  Spending money like it was going out of style on frivilous things wasn't a good business idea either.  The director who was responsible for raping my group let it be known that it was completely political, as he never saw a need for us anyway (Data/Infosec).  Two weeks after we were gone there were public incidents about Chinese and Brazilian hackers breaking into the Enron Broadband network and causing problems.  The person responsible ended up getting fired shortly afterwards because he finally screwed up ont too many times and got popped for sexual harassment, not to mention that they were already unhappy with the things he had done.

On one hand, I'm happy to see the company crumble and the execs being looked at for illegal activities, because many of them participated in the type of trading and stock purchasing that we were unable to do by company policy.  I couldn't buy stock for any company we did business with, yet almost all of the Execs held stock in those companies.

On the other hand, I know it's going to screw the Houston economy over more than it already is, plus I hate to see all those people face the same uncertainty I did.  I still have lots of friends over there.

God Bless Texas

I feel sorry for you guys who lost on the investment but my former employer is going to lose a [b][i]huge[/i][/b] amount of money because of this. [:D]

Dumb bunny I am, I bought 500 shares at $6 and bought 1000 more at $0.66. Oh well, guess I would have been better off investing in pre-bans.

Shoot.  That ain't nothing.  Try being in for 400 @ 17.49  
I allow for one decent f up in my taxes.  I will still break even as long as I don't go through this again!!!

[50]

I got in at $7.30, got out at 8.50.  Did a option, bought it back when it went down. Did 300 shares, made a few bills in 1 week.
c-rock

Ok Sports fans
When a company is posting increasing profits but looking at cost cutting measures and layoffs you should SHORT the shit out of it.
I made some here and in PHYCOR.
cpermd

Kind of makes me wonder about King George W and his energy cartel administration. How coincidental.

Hey, don't dis competition in the engergy industry--it may not help your bills much, but it sure helps accountability!  If one company does something you don't like, at least you can vote with your feet.  That's really important.  

Notice that the Enron CEO cashed in $21M of [b]his[/b] investments right before the big plunge.  Asshole.  It's guys like that who are selling this country down the river--they take advantage of insider info, govt. handouts, and access to other favoritism from the politicians and the system.  I'm no Marxist, but it is abundantly clear that the little guy is taking it in the ass like never before while the rich think up new ways to screw everyone over in the comfort of their mansions or maybe while flying in their personal jets and helicopters or riding in limousines.  The best place to see how bad this can get is just to take a good hard look at the European Union of Socialist States  

Enron's demise will hit Houston hard.  I consider mismanagement at that level criminal.   Those guys make astronomical salaries because of the "responsiblity" they say they have.  Yet when this kind of thing happens they are usually not held responsible.  Live will be destroyed while thier pockets were getting lined.

I think I've got this right.
The company locked-up the employees so they couldn't sell while at the same time the CEO was selling big time.
I caught one possibility for a buck.  One analyst estimated the overseas assets if sold at 50% would yield almost a dollar/share.

I've heard of guys that were close to a $1M retirement this spring when it was in the high 80's.  I feel real bad for those employees that had all their retirement tied-up in Enron.

From what I've seen on TV lately, most seem to feel any criminal wrongdoing will be hard to prove, but I think they'll have their hands full with civil suits (which the payout on sounds a little less than desirable on as well).

Sounds like they will be bought out by Dynegy (spelling?).  The share exchange will amount to about $12 of Dynegy per share of Enron.  Far from the highs of ealier this year, but a little better than where things were headed.

I'm not sure on the particulars of common vs preferred stock, and I'm not sure how this affects anyone who buys at Enron's current price, but Dynegy after the merger will be the dominate trader of elec. and nat gas in North America.  Other than that, I no nothing about them as a company.

[img]http://albums.photopoint.com/j/View?u=1541387&a=14057518&p=56949166[/img]

According to these technical indicators and others that I use, this stock has either been a short sale or stay away with a 50 foot pole since Feb. 2001.

Never short a stock -- buy 'put' options.  Puts can't destroy you, unlike shorting. . . .

A friend of mine works for a division of Enron.  He actually does do real work, and his division makes money.  I hope the division gets acquired, rather than getting buried in the collapse of the trading.

The WSJ had an interesting editorial about Enron today, mentioning that part of the problem was that it was a victim of its own success -- by transforming the energy market and reducing margins, eventually the margins became so small that despite huge cashflows they couldn't make any money on it.  Very much like some of the Internet business models -- a penny here, a penny there, and it just won't pay for the overhead no matter how much you sell!