AH, BRAVE NEW WORLD

That hath such beauteous – man-made – creatures in’t.  Click here to, one day, design your own pet.  (“Craig Venter, the controversial DNA researcher involved in the race to decipher the human genetic code, has built a synthetic chromosome out of laboratory chemicals and is poised to announce the creation of the first new artificial life form on Earth.”)

OUR ROSY FUTURE

And Freeman Dyson just adds fuel to the imaginative fire.  (“Let’s celebrate genetic engineering and our ability to design a new world of plants and creatures.”)

F I love the idea that soon we’ll be able to buy 3-D printers that will allow us to “print” items of our own design (or of others’ designs), as my dentist already prints a crown for my tooth while I wait in his chair.  In his case, the “ink” is some kind of ceramic that grows, layer upon layer, to full size in a matter of minutes.  One day, the ink could spray – instead of black, red, blue, and yellow – a variety of living cells.  Print a new kidney.

CAMOUFLAGE

Walking through the lobby of my swank four-star Washington D.C. hotel room ($550 posted on the door, $129 naming my own price with Priceline), I see a cluster of soldiers in full camouflage.  My thought (other than, “thank you for your service!”):  if they really don’t want to be spotted, wouldn’t a dark suit and Guccis work better here?

MIND-READING THE TAPE

I rouse from my nap every so often to contemplate the gazillions of HAPN warrants I own, and how vast my fortune will be if this works out.  And then I see them trading at barely 20 cents, which would seem to suggest the deal is going to crater in tomorrow’s vote, unless the vote is postponed again (in which case, it might crater later). 

The stock itself, at $5.69, is about where you’d expect it to be if the deal is likely to be nixed.  At $5.69, you get close to $6 back in a few months if no deal is done . . . enough of a guaranteed gain to attract buyers (with the “downside” being that the deal is done, and you don’t get the cash – but maybe it’s a pretty good deal and that’s not so bad after all).

But why would the deal fail?  It’s a question I’ve asked here before, and my answer has been, well, it may fail – and based on the price of the warrants it seems likely to fail (why else would they be selling for 22 cents when they give you the three-year option to buy for $5 HAPN stock currently trading at $5.69?) – yet all management has to do to keep it from failing is to find the big “shareholders of record August 6” who are planning to vote it down and persuade them to take their cash now instead of waiting months and months for it . . . in return for a promise or a proxy to vote our way.

And why would they not?  Just to be mean?

And then it hit me!  Maybe, knowing they are going to kill the deal, they have sold short millions of warrants.  After all, that would be like a license to print money.  Or to use a more A.P.T. analogy, a license to siphon money from my brokerage account to theirs.  (My middle initial is P.  If this is what’s going on, that’s P as in patsy.) 

Because if no deal is done, the warrants can’t be exercised and, thus, expire worthless.    (As you may recall, if owners of 20% of the total outstanding shares vote against the InfuSystem acquisition, it craters.)

But can this really be what’s going on? 

I think maybe not, because it would require three things. 

It would require, first, collusion among at least two of the HAPN August 6 shareholders of record (because no one holder owned 20% August 6 so far as I know) – who really, really trust each other.  I’m not sure, but I’m guessing such collusion might violate securities law. 

It would require, second, a willingness to trade on “the material nonpublic information” that you and a colleague or two plan to kill the deal.  I’m not sure, but that strikes me as the very definition of illegal insider trading, of the type that could land you in jail.

And it would require, third, huge cojones, because to be short millions of these warrants – and I have no knowledge that anyone is – would carry with it the risk of a sharp loss if the deal does get done.  Unless you know for sure it won’t get done because you and your completely trustworthy co-conspirators have made a secret pact to kill it.

I am going back to my nap, because the truth is I have no idea how this will play out, but – having cut my lighting bill by 75% with the installation of CFLs – I am prepared for a total loss on this total speculation.

Kinda interesting though, no?