SHORT INTERESTS: TIPS, TRENDS, OBSERVATIONS

Up in smoke

Stock market gyrations aren’t the only thing sending shudders through Wall Street’s top ranks this month. Three financial honchos — John Steinhardt, head of Chase Manhattan Corp.’s U.S. securities unit, Laurence Zimmerman, CEO of Landover Holdings Corp., an investment boutique specializing in telecommunications, and Edward Marron, a top executive at real estate powerhouse The Related Cos. — were among four New York executives arrested in a federal crackdown against Cuban cigars. The smokes, legendary for their smooth taste and earthy aroma, are banned under the Trading with the Enemy Act, which bars buying goods from Cuba. The fourth executive charged was Kenneth Joseph, chief executive officer of WH Industries, an auto parts giant.

Federal prosecutors allege the men were customers of a Connecticut couple who bought thousands of cigars in Cuba, Morocco and France and sold them for as much as $825 for a box of 25. Prosecutors said the men had the smokes delivered to them at work or at home. They were released on their own recognizance. All four either failed to return calls, or declined to comment, on the stink.

Montezuma’s remodeling

Now that he’s over 60, mutual fund manager Shelby M.C. Davis says “It’s time to give back.”

And he is doing so in a big way, with a gift of $45 million to the United World College of the American West, located east of Santa Fe, N.M., the hometown of Davis Selected Advisors LP, reports InvestmentNews sister publication Pensions & Investments. The gift is through the S&G Foundation, which he cofounded with his wife Gale. The United World College movement was founded in the early 1960s by educational philosopher Kurt Hahn, whose aim was to promote world peace by bringing together the world’s most promising 16- to 19-year-olds. The bulk of the charitable donation — $42 million — will go toward scholarships. The other $3 million will be used to kick off a fund-raising initiative to restore historic Montezuma Castle, the campus’s central building.

The bears have it

Well, it was nice while it lasted. According to “classic Dow Theory,” the bull market ended on July 17, 1998, reports Edgar Lomax Company, an advisory firm in Springfield, Va. That day, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at a record high of 9337.97. Firm officials, who say they successfully sidestepped the 1987 and 1989 market corrections, contend the market will fall to at least 7470.38 before the “current bear market” ends. Dow Theory holds that a major trend in the DJIA must be confirmed by a similar movement in the Dow’s Transportation Average.