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Short Order Execution System. SOES Bandits on the Nasdaq. This system was set up, as I understand it, to spank NASD for not answering the phones during the Oct/87 market crash. Investors couldn't contact the dealers, so they couldn't sell. Lost some shirts, apparently. SOES is limited to certain size blocks of stock, depending on the market maker (Salomon Bros, Prudential, Morgan Stanley, etc.). We simply sit at terminals, in a broker's office, with an SEC licensed person at an order terminal. We watch whatever issues we wish (nasdaq only), and buy and sell all day long. It was "chimpanzee" trading last year, when I came into it. Anyone could win. Pure SOES trading is like a chain letter. If you can get on a market swing first(up or down, your guess), then you can make money. Delay entering too long (can't think about it!), and you'll stand a much higher chance of losing. All this is a much oversimplified explanation. I would still be doing it, except for bad habits developed in the boom market for techs. On profit taking, I would keep trying to guess bottoms, buying several positions on the way down. The market always boomed back within days. Taking candy from a baby. I hadn't experienced an extended down market, or believed how quickly a sector could be killed. So I held many, many shares of CRUS and IDTI as they dropped a few points below where I bought, and then held...for a while. One morning, I sat at the terminal, before opening the market, and watched the brokerages drop CRUS 13 points. Then it only got worse. I'm holding all of it, and right now, not overly optomistic of a recovery for the next one to two years. If you're interested in SOES trading, depending on where you live, there may be an office doing just that. In Austin, Tx., there are at least three. |
