Larry - a market maker is not necessarily a floor trader on NASDAQ - one who makes a market in an equity can be a variety of financial institutions. If you sell an option on stocks you own, you are in essence a market maker, albeit for a short time and inconsequential amount. If you buy commodities or futures, in large enough quantity (such as the Hunt's silver hording) you are also the default market maker. However, the common usage is for floor traders on the NAS (usually in a derogatory vein). When a stock moves in a huge bid/ask spread, the volatility is governed by a variety of factors. On the NYSE, the floor traders make their money in the number of trade's volume, and not in the manipulation of the stock price. Showing an increasing ask generally drives a feeding frenzy, and also is much more short lived than daily incremental steps as in IOM. this shows professionalism in that they are not inflating the price of the ticker or generating zealous interest in a one or two day splash. The floor specialists are managing its price action well. Sorry for the confusion - I didn't mean to imply that the mm was the floor trader/specialist.
As for IOM, it is the defacto standard for most PC's and Macs, but will get some serious competition when recordable CR ROM (not rewriteable) hardware prices fall. Right now, with rebates and timing, I can get the media for free for CD-R, and even though i use ZIP drives in both my desktops and Powerbook, I don't run applications off of them (most people don't), and so if the Cd-R speeds up (100x in testing now) and prices start dropping, the 100 Mb size will be less useful. What will really be great is when the 40 Mb matchbook sixed disks they are making start proliferating - not just to laptops, but to cameras, personal computing devices, super-calculators, communication devices and auto/home/industial uses. IOM has a bright future in my mind.
lastshadow |
