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Non-Tech : Knight/Trimark Group, Inc. -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Herschel Rubin who wrote (2791)	7/26/1999 5:58:00 PM
From: Sir Francis Drake	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10027

Herschel - I did address the issue of shorting. I'll quote from my post 2779 (which I addressed to you in response to your question), and I'll elaborate with additional comments in square brackets: <<As far as shorting, it is just a hypothesis - based partially on my own trading behavior (on a day as down as today, its a no-brainer to short). Further, I see a lot of the selling through ISLD in a pattern of behavior I've seen before when shorting is taking place (the sells appear on the ask side, carefully designed to work with the upbid rule - while selling slows with a very tiny spread which doesn't allow for that move, etc.).[you see a group of tagged orders line up on ISLD on the ask (many traders, myself included often use odd numbers of shares, such as 994, or 917, because it makes it easier to track which order on the book is yours, in a group) ; if the stock moves up, suddenly those disappear - not to reappear on the bid side; these orders tend to appear when the spread is comfortable - more than a teeny, and most importantly, when it looks like they will get to sell - when a stock moves rapidly, the spread widens, and that's when the same tagged orders reappear on the ask - as the spread looks to narrow, or that the tide is turning up, they disappear again, and so on - this is such typical behavior, to me it is pretty clear, and as I said I do it myself, so I recognize the pattern]. Also, if these were just "retail" sellers, not shorters, those ususally get executed in the morning. Rarely do you have an ordinary investor decide to start selling his shares in the middle of the day - if he decides to sell, he puts his sell order in the night before, or at the open But yes, I can't be 100% sure.>> This volume on a decline is bad. I would have much rather one of the two - capitulation on big volume of 7-8 million shares, or a decline on 2-3.0 million at most. This particular kind of volume on the way down (3.1 - 5 million) is bad. Yes the sector is bad - but as I keep pointing out, NITE is the worst performer among them. To decline by almost 10%, indicates WEAKNESS vs the relative strength of SCH (2.4). It doesn't matter if the lockup exp. is old news - it is not like all of a sudden the shares get locked up again just because the news is "old". Insiders (and others) not willing to sell because the price is "low"? This is a serious miscalculation on your part. Figure out how LOW is their cost? It is "worth" selling for almost anything (they will still show a huge profit). But more importantly, they are looking at a market that is headed down for the fall and Y2K fears - so, better get your $ now. And if the price collapses? SO WHAT? They'll just be able to buy back in cheaper. This is a no brainer - sell, not all, but sell. These kind of situations are very common. Morgan