Royce answers and more questions

Message ID: 164540
Posted By: mersenne137
Posted On: 2004-08-07 20:40:00
Subject: Royce answers and more questions

I called Royce Funds seeking answers to the 6/30/04 Institutional holding list. I spoke with a Ms D. Ing in the legal department, and a Mr. Robinson (?) from the investment desk. They were evasive, but gave me some information.

Royce has actually **NOT** sold many shares of SCOX. Sometime in May, it changed its arrangement with Jonathan Cohen's managing Investment Advisor business (JHC Investment) so the stocks owned by the Royce Technology Value Fund (RYTVX) are not reported on the Royce SEC 13F statement.

For this reason, all holdings in RYTVX are shown as "sold" by Royce. This includes 450K shares of SCOX, 1,300k shares of CYBS, and numerous other issues. I can't imagine CYBS and others were happy with a reported huge institutional dump, despite the fact most shares were not actually sold.

So the story remains the same: Royce is inexplicably holding on to SCOX, despite accumulating losses. It is actively trying to obscure the holdings of its RYTVX affiliate.

Since the June 30 filing, Cohen's RYTVX has definitely sold a large stake in CYBS, and figures indicate that some SCOX may have sold as well. The CYBS sales came on July 16, the hypothetical SCOX sales are about 40K as of July 31.

RYTVX closed Friday at $5.69. It is under heavy redemption pressure, and has stopped reporting montly total assets in it monthly online accounting.

JHC Investment filed a SEC registration statement on March 22, 2004. It apparently considers itself exempt from public reporting requirements at that time, the new arrangement may require it to submit the quarterly holding list by the Aug 15 deadline. The SEC regs on who is required to submit the 13F statement are opaque to me.

The JHC Investment Management has only one partner: Jonathan Harris Cohen. It manages 2 funds, including a private hedge fund. In March, it had 118 MM in total assests under management, RYTVX was at about 85 MM at that time so the hedge was about 40MM in assets.

The JHC registration statement also includes asset reporting for the affiliated investment partnerships run by Cohen

JHC indicated in the SEC registration that it buys and sells securities privately that it also manages. This may be the reason Royce has divorced itself of the RYTVX assets: Cohen is privately hedging stocks he manages Long for RYTVX,and this is likely to violate Royce governance principles

RYTVX sold 300K shares in the Descartes System Group (DSGX) in Q2. DSGX suffered a meltdown when its CEO was caught cooking the books and abruptly resigned. DSGX is a Canadian RFID tag/wholesale logistic firm.

The DSGX experience indicates Cohen and Royce will bail when the legal problems or losses at SCOX become insupportable.

Investment Advisor search for JHC information:
http://www.adviserinfo.sec.gov/IAPD/Content/Search/iapd_OrgSearch.asp

Message ID: 164544
Posted By: rgriffith64
Posted On: 2004-08-07 21:40:00
Subject: Re: Royce answers and more questions

Yahoo seems to have a good handle on RYTV

http://finance.yahoo.com/q/hl?s=RYTVX

Over 7% of its assets in a stock with a YTD return of -65%

http://finance.yahoo.com/q/pm?s=RYTVX

Wow a 90% return in 2003. I guess if you ride the pump up that is what you get. Time for the bubble to burst.

Message ID: 164622
Posted By: freecode_99
Posted On: 2004-08-08 15:20:00
Subject: No message boards for Royce either

They don't want a lot of people knowing the shady side of their dealings IMHO.

TICC, Royce & Associates, RYTVX, Micro-cap funds, others. No way to discuss those in a message board.

Maybe we need to start a magazine to uncover shady deals like these. Would be nice to have some real independent news coverage that acted like media is supposed to act : as watchdogs for our liberties instead of fearmongers and shills.

freecode

Message ID: 164629
Posted By: karl_w_lewis
Posted On: 2004-08-08 15:49:00
Subject: Re: No message boards for Royce either

>> Maybe we need to start a magazine to uncover shady deals like these. Would be nice to have some real independent news coverage that acted like media is supposed to act : as watchdogs for our liberties instead of fearmongers and shills. <<

Well, yes, that'd be really, realy cool. But...

I think, (and I would love to be wrong), that the marketplace has spoken already. Fearmongering sells. Shilling sells ad space. Fearmongering and shilling together gets readers and advertisers. (Thus the preponderance of that in the market place, today.)

If you have in mind a printed publication there are real costs that have to be offset, and short of winning a lottery, (or perhaps you are already independently wealthy, (in which case can I borrow ten bucks?)), it may be very, very hard to make that go.

Of course, the internet changes, (by virtually eliminating), all the costs. So an on-line magazine might could work realy well, and not break the bank.

Sites like Groklaw demonstrate that there is a deep hunger in at least a small group of people, to get undiluted news. But, (call me cynical), I think many. (most?), people would rather avoid stories that make them really uncomfortable. The fearmongering that goes on in the press, is, I would argue, rather like a roller-coaster ride, it *seems* a little scary, but the reader/rider knows they're safe. News as entertainment sells; news that is news is avoided.

KWL

Grokbuck? Grokthieves? Grokwhores? (No, that just sounds very wrong.)

The texts of these Yahoo Message Board posts have been licensed for copying and distribution by the Yahoo Message Board users "mersenne137", "rgriffith64", "freecode_99", "karl_w_lewis" under the following license: License: CCL Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike v2.0.