Reply #24: You are 100% correct.

[Lucky Luciano]

Companies often raise money by issuing shares. In this case, as a condition to receiving the BILLYUNS and BILLYUNS of dollars from the government, AIG had to issue over 10B shares to the government.

Another less incredible example is that WYNN (As in Wynn Resorts and Casinos in Las Vegas) issued 9.6 million shares yesterday at $19 per share to raise money to pay down debts. Happens all the time - and people who own shares get diluted unless they take part in the issuance. Usually the issuance occurs ata discount to the previous closing price. WYNN closed t $19.63 or so when they issued the shares at $19 and it traded very well - in the premarkets and near the open it started around $18.80, but climbed throughout the day with the strong market to close at $20.72 yesterday, though it is down around $19.95 right now. I think it traded well because there were probably not very many "flippers" just trying to buy the discount and hoping that it would trade well - I think that because WYNN has a HUGE short interest and that some of the buyers bought the offering to cover their short positions at a discount - ie they would not be selling after buying. I knew it would trade well - Had I not been laid off from my trading desk, I would have said to buy it! Another reason it could have traded well is because the float increased by more than 5% with that issuance of shares. This causes the Standard and Poors to increase WYNN's weighting in the S&P 500, which means that index tracking funds which own about 12% of the S&P 500 have to buy shares to stay inline with the index - this means that those funds would need to buy about 1.2MM shares of WYNN and this buying with a huge short interest (Meaning the shorts could get squeezed) could have helped push the stock up as well on a short term basis. OK sorry for blabbering.