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Strategies & Market Trends : Rande Is . . . HOME -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Joe Smith who wrote (14405)	11/5/1999 10:48:00 AM
From: Rande Is	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 57584

Bears are getting bold today, despite raging bull. . .caution is urged in the most obvious. . . AMTD, CNQR, SIEB, EGRP, NITE all showed signs of large short positions at open. Not finding same on others of the stocks we trade. . . A good intraday with minute by minute lines showing b and a will often show the ask being held up, while bid drops and spread holds fairly wide. . .which is followed by slow and steady downticks. . . remember shortsellers go in and out with tiny moves. . . placing large phantom buys to hold the uptick, then with the other hand short-selling. . .then once their short-sell order is filled they remove their large buy size, which pressures further. One day we will discuss this technique on the buy side. . .which is rarely used by online traders.. . . primarily because you cannot "flash" size on the sell side of a stock you don't yet own. . . . but you CAN if you already have a position. . . and when you go to sell your shares, you can flash whatever size you wish to hold up the price. And while my interpretation of SEC regs is that this type of trading is "not permitted". . . it is absolutely never enforced. . .furthermore, it is used every single day in most every stock by large traders. . . which says that the SEC turns their head on "phantom" buy or sell orders as a rule. . . so we may as well discuss the technique for getting us lower prices and for regaining control of an issue with heavy short positions. I would love for an SEC rep to send me a PM or an email at Rande@writeme.com for a better clarification of these rules. . .but at this time, it is like holding in a football game. . it isn't a problem, unless the ref throws the flag. . . .and there doesn't seem to be any refs to throw flags on phantom buys or sells. Remember any "concerted effort" of trading in either direction is a violation of SEC regs, so any such action must be independent. . . even though there are many private sites where each buy and sell absolutely concerted. . . at posted prices. Anyway, we'll discuss this on a slower day. Rande Is