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Strategies & Market Trends : MDA - Market Direction Analysis -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Casaubon who wrote (30093)	10/15/1999 11:41:00 PM
From: Dwight E. Karlsen	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 99985

Well of course it was funds ("money pools") which did a lot of the selling today. But a person is "managing" that money. Also, I might be wrong, but I believe that most people who contribute to 401K's can move the money around, some can even do that commission free, anytime they want. But J6P trying to sell 50 or 100 shrs of MSFT doesn't cause these sorts of declines. At any rate, it was people doing the selling. One of the owners of the company I work for told me today that last week he sold two of his mutual funds. He doesn't ever buy individual stocks. But plus, he was actually happy today that he has an automatic "dollar cost averaging" that puts x amount of money into the market, and today was this month's buy-in day. I guess I somewhat disagree that ppl are "getting fleeced". I think they know the risks. If the don't, perhaps they are learning fast -GGG-. I can laugh, because I learned, too. I've had painful losses, first on the long side (fall '97), then losses on the short side (Feb '98). I don't know about other ppl, but the money I have lost was earned the old-fashioned way: I worked hard for it. And I was reckless and greedy with it. My lesson was not that someone on WS was "screwing me", but that the market is volatile, and yes it's very hard to predict what will happen. If it was easy, I suppose nobody would have to work anymore, because they would have all have made enough with lucrative trades to retire early. I have ZERO sympathy for those that lost money today, especially if it's because they always blindly invested long and refused to take defensive maneuvers, like occassionally selling a stock. Besides, it's only money. I have sympathy for people suffering real problems beyond their control, like a disease or other health problem. The reason some people (not all) get taken to the cleaners on WS is their own greed. Funny that when ppl are making 100% a day on an internet stock ipo, I don't hear them complaining that WS is screwing them. Above comments are not directed at you personally, just putting them out there. It's a risky world. I know that I have taken control of my own financial world, by playing both sides of WS manic phases. Last week I made a very profitable SPX call trade, and this week I made a very profitable SPX put trade. So of course I'm not in a complaining mood -GG-. It takes a lot of time to analyse the charts and try to gauge sentiment, but I was happy to have profited yesterday, and then sat out today in a money market. I was cut off from the market all day today, anyway.