Little Sense of Impending Doom on Lucent Message Boards, Options Pits

Lucent's (LU Quote) Thursday afternoon earnings warning remained largely under wraps ahead of the company's announcement, though late in trading there were a few whiffs of blood in the options markets and on one Internet bulletin board.

Just after the close, the company said first-quarter earnings would fall far short of analysts' expectations. The stock, which was halted late in the afternoon, dropped 3 5/16, or 4.6%, to 69 1/16 during the trading day before slipping an additional 17 to 52 1/16 in postmarket trading, in extraordinarily heavy volume of 6 million shares, according to Instinet.

Whispering about Lucent's bombshell was limited to a single Internet message board. Some two hours before Lucent made its announcement, a posting to a board dedicated to discussion of Lucent featured a comment that the company could miss earnings.

"LU is rumored to have bad earnings. LU will not even come close. Get will [sic] you can," a Dr. Heskel posted at 2:17 p.m. EST on the Raging Bull Lucent board. Dr. Heskel didn't respond to a request for comment. ...