Planet Abell

A funny thing happened on the way to Facebook's second lockup expiration Wednesday — it sent the bears running for cover, unlike lockup expiration version 1.0 back in August. This is good news — but it's not all good. The good news is obvious enough: Facebook shares not only held their own but rallied — more than on  any other day  of the company's brief, rocky existence as a public company. Shares  shot up about 13% , to close at $23.23. And to emphasize that wasn't some kind of irrationally exuberant fluke, $FB was essentially flat and in line with a slightly down NASDAQ in early Thursday trading. The bad news is not as obvious: Insider holders of Facebook stock saw the prospect of dumping as many as  800 million shares  on the market all at once as a holding opportunity — not a chance to cash in on a windfall that is a significant part of their compensation package. The "maybe good, maybe bad" news? Strong, counterintuitive performances like this...

Headline: YouTube is toast (when copyright holders decide to enforce their rights) Subhead: Google would be crazy to buy YouTube (or moronic , as Cuban subsquently blogs) Best line of questioning: Does it pass the smell test to: do private research into a tradeable company, take a position in that company based on your private research that will likely result in a gain if the facts were disclosed, disclose the information and simultaneously, disclose that you have taken a position for the purpose of making a gain, thus creating, end to end, the conditions to benefit financially from the research you commissioned? Best question after the event: "Wasn't that a keynote Cuban was supposed to deliver?"