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Strategies & Market Trends : DAYTRADING Fundamentals -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: OZ who wrote (2935)	8/17/1999 1:06:00 AM
From: Bilow	Respond to of 18137

Hi OZ; Obviously Alan Sloan doesn't know C$@p about margin loans. There is so much commentary from people who know nothing about this business that it stuns me. P.S. I had a great day, made 16.7 cents per share, before commissions. :) -- Carl

To: OZ who wrote (2935)	8/17/1999 4:41:00 PM
From: JB2	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 18137

Hi OZ, I've never read that shallow chump Sloan's articles, but it's obvious from his response to you that his research skills are weak since he, like most mainstream news reporters, probably relies on rumors, institutional shills, and whatever sloshes in over the AP/Reuters wire the day his deadline comes due. Newsweek should run with a subtitle "Generalizations-R-Us". First of all, who said anything about daytrading being easy? Hell, delivering mail isn't an "easy" job, or even easy to get; and it tops out at what, $60K a year if that, but somehow that difficult and not so lucrative career spawned a new phrase in popular American lexicon: "going postal". The ease of the work is immaterial to whether or not more regulation of it is required. He asks "do you have any idea how lucrative margin loans are for brokerage houses?" Yes, that is why "brokerage houses" are really mad that daytrading firms and online brokers are stealing their business right out from under their gilded brick & mortar noses. If Sloan really wants to put his bleeding heart on his sleeve, he should look into exorbitant rates charged by car title lenders/loan sharks, and lowlife credit card companies. So far this year, the newshounds have been digging up new angles on the travesty of daytrading every month or so. CNBC was on a jag about people being addicted to trading stocks. Here is a letter I sent CNBC at the time (another of my windy defenses)---I believe we need to present these "reporters" with some counterpoint angles regularly, because as was made amply evident by news coverage over the latest Kennedy death, the news media is in bed with the establishment, and consider themselves to be peers of the rich and powerful not their average readers. I say Bombard them, til they get the message straight. To TodaysBusiness@cnbc.com (2-24-99) Why all the daytrader bashing? Why not interview congressmen on the topic of saving poor suckers who "invest" in state-run gambling operations like video poker and lotto, and become "addicted" to that? Maybe because that is state sanctioned and the odds are rigged overwhelmingly in favor of the state, and few congressmen want interference dealt to the hands that feed them. Why not ask people like Cramer and Berkowitz, and your other trader guests if they are "addicted" and let us all get a good laugh. It seems your reporters are enamored with big old line brokerages and don't want to see them losing out in this internet fueled microtrading revolution. As Jesse Ventura keeps saying: You can't legislate stupidity. Internet assisted trading is the most democratic development to rock the financial world in my lifetime. Please don't forget to include the basis for the whole phenomenon in your upcoming stories: After the little crashes of "87 and "97, the exchanges and brokers were ORDERED by the govt. to allow access to all traders, large and small, and not give preference to big clients. Re: the word "addiction"---it is way overused, and is hyperbole the way you sling it around. Why is it when overpaid Wall Streeters manage "the people's" money, and spend their days analyzing research & charts and placing trades they are lauded as dedicated professionals, but when "the people" begin getting unprecedented access to formerly exclusive information streams via the internet and venture into managing their own accounts, they are denigrated as foolish addicts? Next you'll be doing pieces on "Codependent relationships between brokers and clients---How to break the destructive cycles"! Yes it is time consuming to monitor the markets and perform due diligence, but is addiction now synonymous with dedication? How about for every interview with an idiotic/unsuccessful individual trader, you air an interview with a stupid/unscrupulous broker? Who helps provide the necessary manpower and capital flow to keep the markets liquid---daytraders. Without this enhanced liquidity the stock market would be like the real estate market----slow, inefficient, unwieldy and at the mercy of monopolistic local multiple listing services with the exorbitant 6% brokers' fees. Reporters should be doing more to hail this new development of technology instead of focusing on the pitfalls of freedom. Was it Ben Franklin who said: He who would give up his freedom for security will have neither? The freedom of the people to invest what little money they have left after mandatory 10% paycheck deductions for "social security" (like that is being wisely managed by our big brother in D.C.) not to mention the new evergrowing medicare tax, fica, and other income taxes, should not be jeopardized because of the hasty actions of some fresh fools, or the desperate cries of established old financial firms. It should not be a crime to allocate and risk one's own money.