ERROR ON STOCK SYMBOL PROVES TO BE A COSTLY MISTAKE; A BUMP ON THE SUPERHIGHWAY.Byline: Deborah Adamson Daily News Staff Writer In her rush to invest in an Internet company, Levina Goodrow took a wrong turn on the information superhighway. As the 48-year-old single mom got ready to leave her house one morning, she heard two investment pundits on television talking about CitySearch, a Pasadena firm that provides city arts and entertainment guides on the Internet Guides on the Internet (GOTI) is an event for Girl Guides. It is very similar to Guides on the Air but the communication is through IRC networks such as scoutlink or through internet telephony VOIP. See Also
Wanting to capitalize on Cap´i`tal`ize on` v. t. 1. To turn (an opportunity) to one's advantage; to take advantage of (a situation); to profit from; as, to capitalize on an opponent's mistakes s>. the next hot Internet stock Internet stock The equity security of a company engaged primarily in a business associated with the Internet. Also called dot-com. , she picked up the phone and asked her discount broker to buy CTYS CTYS Chat to You Soon . She didn't catch the name of the firm, but heard the ticker symbol Ticker Symbol An arrangement of characters (usually letters) representing a particular security listed on an exchange or otherwise traded publicly. When a company issues securities to the public marketplace, it selects an available ticker symbol for its securities which investors . ``I had seen how the (stock of) Internet companies shoot way up and I thought this may be a way to make money,'' said Goodrow, who started investing two weeks ago. ``With the little I have in savings, I better do something with it.'' But in a tragic case of mistaken identity mistaken identity n → erreur f d'identité mistaken identity mistake n → Verwechslung f mistaken identity n , Goodrow ended up buying the wrong stock. Instead of CitySearch, she got Cityscape (company) CityScape - A re-seller of Internet connections to the PIPEX backbone. E-Mail: <sales@cityscape.co.uk>. Address: CityScape Internet Services, 59 Wycliffe Rd., Cambridge, CB1 3JE, England. Telephone: +44 (1223) 566 950. Financial Corp. in Elmsford, N.Y., a company going bankrupt. Other investors likely made the same mistake. The stock of Cityscape rose as high as 17 cents July 21 from 5 cents in the beginning of July, on volume more than 10 times its monthly average. It closed at 7 cents Monday as interest in the stock subsided. ``People don't do their research,'' said Larry Wien, a principal at Wien Securities in Jersey City, N.J., which handles Cityscape shares. Interest ``has abated quite a bit since the news came out'' that investors were buying Cityscape, not CitySearch. Cityscape is not the only company to benefit from stock-market confusion, just the latest. In June, when AT&T announced it was buying Tele-Communications Inc., investors rushed to buy TCII TCII Transcobalamin II TCII Technical Committee on Intelligent Informatics TCII Technical Committee on Information Infrastructure (IEEE) TCII TCI International, Inc. . Unfortunately, that's the ticker symbol for TCI (Trustworthy Computing Initiative) An umbrella term from Microsoft for its efforts to improve security in Windows. TCI was announced in 2002 after viruses such as Code Red and Nimda had succeeded in attacking numerous Windows computers. International, not Tele-Communications Inc. (TCOMA). In Goodrow's case, she didn't carefully listen to the TV report on CitySearch before buying 1,000 shares of CTYS for 14 cents July 21 and another 1,000 shares for 23 cents Wednesday. When Goodrow asked her discount broker for CTYS, her broker asked if the stock she wanted was Cityscape Financial. Since she didn't know the name of the company, she asked the broker if Cityscape had anything to do with the Internet. The broker didn't know. ``You don't have any other CTYS?'' Goodrow said she asked. ``Will (Nasdaq) ever have any other (company trading under) CTYS?'' No, the broker replied to both questions, according to according to prep. 1. As stated or indicated by; on the authority of: according to historians. 2. In keeping with: according to instructions. 3. Goodrow. So Goodrow bought the stock and recommended it to a friend, who bought 5,000 shares as well. While it was the wrong company, Goodrow did get the ticker symbol right. In June, CitySearch filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission to go public under the ticker symbol CTYS. At the time of the filing, Cityscape was using CTYS, but Nasdaq can take the symbol of a pink sheet or OTC Bulletin Board OTC Bulletin Board An electronic quotation listing of the bid and asked prices of OTC stocks that do not meet the requirements to be listed on the NASDAQ stock-listing system. company, where firms are listed with no minimum requirements, and give that symbol to another company to be listed on the Nasdaq National or SmallCap markets, according to Nasdaq spokesman Mike Shokouhi. Cityscape was kicked off the SmallCap Market in May for not meeting minimum Nasdaq requirements. The mortgage lender is now listed on the Bulletin Board. While Nasdaq generally switches over the symbol the day before the listing, it hastened up the procedure for Cityscape to avoid further confusion. On Monday, Cityscape started trading under CYYS. All of which doesn't help Goodrow, who at least is taking her loss in stride Adv. 1. in stride - without losing equilibrium; "she took all his criticism in stride" in good spirits . ``I've learned a valuable lesson,'' she said. NAME: CitySearch Inc. HQ: Pasadena. BUSINESS: Provides local city guides on the World Wide Web. ANNUAL REVENUE: $6.2 million. ANNUAL INCOME: Loss of $36.5 million. TICKER SYMBOL: CTYS, once it goes public. MONDAY CLOSE: Not yet trading. NAME: Cityscape Financial Corp. HQ: Elmsford, N.Y. BUSINESS: Mortgage lender. ANNUAL REVENUE: $34 million. ANNUAL INCOME: Loss of $419 million, or $12.60 per diluted share, reflecting losses of $295.8 million from selling its United Kingdom subsidiary. TICKER SYMBOL: CYYS, formerly CTYS. MONDAY CLOSE: 7 cents. CAPTION(S): Chart CHART: HEAVY TRADING Volume was heavy in CTYS shares this month. But what investors thought was CitySearch was, in fact, Cityscape. SOURCE: Bloomberg News Daily News |
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