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

To: Retta who wrote (3314)	8/9/1999 7:43:00 PM
From: Sir Francis Drake	Respond to of 10027

Thank you Retta, you are being entirely too kind - I'm trying to make heads or tails of this beast with the rest of the investors/traders. "Shorting" simply means selling shares of a stock FIRST, with the hope of buying back for a lower price. This means the broker has to borrow shares from somewhere (usually margin accounts). Now, if you manage to buy the shares back at a lower price - the broker returns the shares to the owner, and you keep the difference in price. As you can well imagine there are certain risks associated with shorting. I should also note that shorting by individuals is somewhat different than for MMs (MMs don't have to follow certain rules - upbid etc, and don't have to worry about locating shares first). Institutions can play some very nifty games shorting. In answer to a question about shorting risks, I wrote a post on a different board: techstocks.com As to "confidence in trading NITE" - if you mean position trade (i.e. the holding of a position in NITE over several days) - no, I have no such confidence. I may take a risk with a swing trade (holding just overnight for a buy/sell the next day), but mostly, I daytrade it (exploit intraday volatility, whether through "scaplping" - for 1/4 to 1/2 point, or hitting it for more points with a short/long intraday position). Frankly, at this point I pay little attention to classical TA for NITE, and concentrate more on what the trading action tells me - which can be a very short term perspective useful for daytrading and little else. For longer term prospects - I no longer think the road is clear, there are too many unresolved issues. I still think NITE will perform well in the future, but it may need to "prove" itself over several quarters, and I wouldn't expect it to climb significantly (60 or above) this year. Of course, anything is possible, and should f.ex. Merril Lynch purchase a significant position in NITE, you could see NITE jump overnight. But at this time, my best read of the situation is that it is at most a trade for small moves and its better not to make any "big" commitments. The business is undergoing a revolution, and nobody knows how to value NITE at present or going forward. In such circumstances you have chaos, and you can throw TA out the window - it's a free-for-all. Morgan