Uh-oh! The Wall Street Journal is reporting that in 2004 Mark Cuban avoided $750,000 worth of losses by selling off his entire stake in Mamma.com, the day before the company announced it was raising money through what's called a PIPE deal. Now, I have no idea what a PIPE deal is, or why it's bad, but shares in the company dropped 10% the next day, and charges have now been filed against Cuban by the SEC. Somewhere, I suspect there are a lot of NBA owners laughing their asses off.

But what I really find interesting about this-- shocking, really-- is how Mamma.com could have possibly lost money. Look at this thing! With the old lady graphic and it being offered in Francais and the first seven hits for "Toronto Blue Jays" being completely useless garbage from about.com, and no sign of the Jays' official site or anything remotely worthwhile coming up, how could it possibly fail? Oh. (TIP: Try it with your own favourite team-- I bet your experience with "the mother of all search engines" will be as shitty as mine.)

UPDATE: According to With Leather, which, I think we can all agree, is probably the most trusted source I could come up with to explain the intricacies of the stock market: "PIPE means that the company is creating more shares and selling them at a discounted price in order to raise cash, thereby brown-holing those that already own the stock"

They also pass along this post from Vent About Sports where they speculate that maybe MLB knew this was coming, and that's why the whole buying the Chicago Cubs thing hasn't quite seemed to work out...