William:
I believe I will respond more generally to the approach that you take on this thread. I do not intend this to be mean-spirited. However, when one offers one's thoughts in a public forum, other participants have the right to respond.
I disagree with your approach. As I have documented in the Ask Michael Burke thread, I have trouble with Ney. The initial thrust of his arguments were interesting. (By the way, I have read The Wall Street Jungle and The Wall Street Gang). Indeed they are fascinating looks inside a world that we rarely get an honest glimpse. From his point of view, the NYSE world is a game with a deck stacked seriously against the small investor. All nature of cheating goes on constantly. My reaction to this dulled as he went more and more into it. If the game were that crooked, why should we play? If we play knowingly in a crooked game, why do we belly ache? Then he makes some very awkward transitions into a form of technical analysis, that I think most technicians would reject as superficial.
I am not a technical analysis fan. However, I think aspects of one's overall market approach can be learned from technical analysis. Three things come to mind to illustrate what I am saying here. First, when I think we can all learn discipline from ta. Many good technicians work very hard and apply their theories rigorously. They are making an addition by asking us to consider to be dispassionate about our market decisions. Second, from Elliot Wave theory, we have the idea that nothing goes in one direction unabated. That up moves have counter (smaller) down moves, and that down moves have counter (smaller) up moves. And third, from Elliot Wave and other theories, they are always carefully hedging their statements with possible alternative counts and other explanations.
I will try to be specific in my critique of your posts:
1. Are you saying anything usable? I think not. On October 27, you said your best guess was the stock was going to 14. That you were reasonably sure that it would not touch 30. That the specialist was going short all the way through the mid 20's. That analysts would take months to reverse their judgments. In fact there were several upgrades within a week of your comment.
I realize that no one knows where a stock or the market will be at some point in the future. If any of us did, we would quickly zoom to the top of the Forbes 400. However, your reading of the tea leaves is quite dogmatic on the one hand about what you perceive the specialist to be doing, usually wrong, and from my vantage point nearly never usable information.
2. You say that SEG is a seriously manipulated stock. Then why play this game? It's like finding the most crooked poker game in town and sitting down at the table. If you really believe that the specialist was going short in 24-25-26 range and the stock crossed 30 and is now at 28 11/16, does he really control the price?
3. Your views are always biased as someone who holds the stock. If the specialist is manipulating when the stock is "dropped", wouldn't it be a wonderful opportunity for someone who believed in seg to buy in at "artifically" depressed prices? Yet you always have contempt when the price drops.
4. Your views are slanted in the direction of indicating that you have greater insight due to the Ney philosophy. Yet you are long nearly 5000 shares at 38. It seems like the Ney philosophy hands out blame to the specialist when a stock goes the wrong way.
5. You don't debate either dd experts such as stitch or market experts such as Michael Burke or ta experts such as Donald Sew or David Plonk. It seems to me you could refine your methods with some input from others that might have different viewpoints. I believe that much of the best discussion of seg takes place on the Disk Drive Discussion forum.
6. You say that you know nothing about the economics of the dd business. Is that the way you recommend that others invest, without knowledge?
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In general, I believe it takes all of us to make a market. If we all agreed with each other, there would be no need for SI. I am not trying to tell you to give it up or to go away. However, while Ney might have made some good points, I suggest you broaden your approach. |
