Tom - Like with anything else, there are good and honest MMs who just trade like (IMO) they're supposed to, there are the "crusader" types who think their role is to protect small investors from what they perceive as overvalued momo plays and who aggressively short the flyers, and then there are the small shops that use their built-in advantages as MMs to blatantly pick small investors' pockets. We generally can't tell who is who at any given time on a given stock, because there are often good and bad guys even within the same house.
My MM tries to use NITE, PGON (only their Florida office) and FRAN whenever he doesn't make the stock I want to trade, and we've found that we get good, honest service from them. HILL and WIEN are OK, too, and my guy even works well with WDCO. HRZG, SHRP, MASH, ALEX and some of the other big guys (and a LOT of the little guys), however, are another story. We all just need to take into account which MMs tend to be the axe in deciding whether to get involved with a particular stock. I think you see other MMs following the lead of NITE and HRZG mostly out of fear, and knowing that they generally represent the largest number of orders. That doesn't mean, IMO, that NITE is not a mostly honest shop (but I don't have any faith in HRZG).
the big MMs use investors against one-another I'm sure that's true. But a lot of traders - especially those of us who are smarter than I am, since I can't seem to learn this lesson <g> - are playing mostly for small pops and not big ones these days. That's going to continue until some exuberance and confidence return. My problem, personally, is that I'm always too confident in my own stocks. Ride 'em up, ride 'em down! -Eric |
