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Gold/Mining/Energy : Manhattan Minerals (MAN.T) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jeff Dickson who wrote (3123)	7/14/1999 9:55:00 AM
From: TrueScouse	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 4504

Jeff: <<I'm expecting some interesting action in MAN>> We're getting some. It's opened up with a small gap today on good volume -- currently at $6.60 with about 70,000 traded so far. I wouldn't be surprised to see it close the gap but then trade higher again on the day. Reminds me of 1996! Howy

To: Jeff Dickson who wrote (3123)	7/14/1999 11:03:00 AM
From: Not_Active	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 4504

Jeff: You're exactly right, my stuff is very short-term oriented, but that's just my current trading perspective. Classical TA can be applied to all time frames, but some things seem to work better short term and some better long term. One of the underlying assumptions about TA never gets discussed, but I think it is important and goes a long way towards explaining why is doesn't work as well in thinly traded stocks. The successful use of TA is predicated on have a non-stochastic time series of data (with your training, I'm guessing that you know the implications of that). In big cap stocks or futures with lots of volume and analysts following the company, this non-stochastic requirement is pretty well met most of the time. However, when surprise earnings come out or some deal hits the company, you will hear TA types talk about how the chart is wrecked (as opposed to being a wreck, Howy!). Basically what they mean is that a stochastic jump has occurred and past price information becomes less useful. I think this point is related to your questions about the effect of changing capital structure on the use of TA, and it is certainly relevant to the frequent release of news that materially effects the companies prospects. So, in the exploratory mining sector, not only does the thin trading compromise the effectiveness of TA, but the stochastic nature of the time series does as well. This doesn't make TA useless for these companies, but it does serve to "widen" the confidence bands around projected moves .... whereas a bear flag may break in the opposite direction only 5-10% of the time in a watched company with volume, the opposite-from-expected move may occur 20-30% of the time in stocks like MAN. As for short sellers, they perhaps contribute to efficiency in the information sense (no, they do), but they also provide an important liquidity function both in their selling activity (providing shares to the market that might not otherwise be there for purchase) and their covering activity (buying when everyone wants to sell). And thanks for the comments on IntelligentSpeculator.com .... the group has been working hard on it over the last year and I think its becoming a place that can serve an underserved audience on the web. There will be a face-lift and reorganization in about 10 days, so be sure to check in from time to time .... and decloak to let me know your around! :o) Kacy