Monday, January 08, 2007

Why I sold Pegasus Communications

I checked my brokerage website and it turns out I sold Pegasus Communications last Friday. Normally when I enter a going-private position like Pegasus, I initiate a limit-sell order near the cash-out price. It's sort of a safety valve in case the deal falls through later. Naturally, if the deal goes through (as this one had), I should raise the limit price to cover the commission cost which I won't have to pay when the reverse-split is paid. But the whole process is a bit silly since it's unlikely anyone will pay more than the cash-out price to purchase the shares. For some reason, someone did this time.

The final tally on the Pegasus Communications position was a 47.55% gain over 18 days. That works out to a 268,006.81% annualized return. If I had canceled or raised the limit order, I would have recorded a 111.80% gain, but my annualized return would have been much lower. Obviously, the total amount of this transaction is trivial. One nice thing about this deal is that my broker (USAA) recently lowered my commission from $19.95 to $11.95, which means I'm going to spend a lot less in the future.

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