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Politics : Idea Of The Day -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: IQBAL LATIF who wrote (29897)	12/2/1999 12:44:00 PM
From: Lee Lichterman III	Respond to of 50167

I guess it all depends on how you trade. While you try to focus on teh few remaining longs and profit, I like the bigger pool of decliners that seems to just get bigger every day and short them. INthe last year, there have been many many times more losers than winners so it is easier to pick a good short as long as you stay away from the few remaining winners like CSCO, EMC, SUNW etc. I love this market !!! Every week a "street darling" is thrown out and allowed to fall at least 30% and in some cases 60%. Others just go flat in a tight trading range allowing swings on both sides such as DELL this last year. These in my opinion are the easiest to trade since main stream cyclic indicators work so well as do conventional trend lines marking support and resistance. I believe we are both right. I like playing puts more than calls since as I said the field of eligibles is bigger but if you check my site, I mainly post long trades since most traders only buy stock instead of options and many also only trade long. My only point was that the market internals are not good. I do believe we are in a mania and don't see how anyone can dispute that. This year's rise in the NASDAQ is over 50% which is one of the largest gains in years. Can you look inthe mirror looking yourself in the eye and tell yourself this is the best forward looking time in the market despite the tightest labor makret in 30 years, 3 rate increases, oil more than doubling, CRB prices starting to reverse back upwards etc etc? The stocks you mention as main stream brand names is a well known phenomonon and many "experts" have commented and written books on how to trade them. I believe the term is "Gorilla Stocks". The safety of large volume and sound business practises, thier almost monopolistic cornering of their sectors can not be argued with and us Mo Mo traders have to play them long for the safety of quick exits. However as far as those that don't track the market daily, I do feel they are at very dangerous valuations. PE ratios based on earnings 2-3 years out and still being over the high range of what has historically been the "norm" is ludicrous. I love SUNW, EMC, CSCO etc etc. But IF the market ever were to return to a "normal" level by hiostoric terms, these would trade at much much lower levels. I dont think the markets will drop to this type of level for a long time but I do expect it to start heading that way next spring/summer. I dont expect a crash but more of a grinding down as those in disbelief keep buying the dip. I say this because I have played too many of the stocks that have fallen out of favor over the last year and a half and watched them trade this way during their long declines. Slow small drops everyday on low volume, then a spike up and another cycle of slow grinding down. I agree money can be made long but I also think money can be made short much easier. Type in ticker symbols at random, not ones you know, just random letters on a weekly chart and most are long grinds down since last April. Don't get me wrong, I love playing calls. I just sleep better being short as long as I am not fighting the mania stocks. Look at today for example. Bond falling yet again, advance decline getting worse with each hour yet the indexes are up. A quick scan shows the rally is narrow. Out of the 500 SPX stocks, most are down with only the heavy weights up. Pardon me, but I have shorts to get into. <ggg> Good Luck, Lee

To: IQBAL LATIF who wrote (29897)	12/2/1999 1:05:00 PM
From: dave katragadda	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 50167

Dear Iqbal, What are your thoughts on the unemployment no. for tomorrow. and hourly earnings? Any way to kind of guess based on weekly numbers? Any linkof thanksgiving and shopping season for retailers to hourly earnings? Thank you

To: IQBAL LATIF who wrote (29897)	12/2/1999 2:44:00 PM
From: JDinBaltimore	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 50167

Ike, I found this on my computer - I don't know where it came from nor who wrote it. But once I started following you're thread a while back, this pretty much sums up what you are teaching for those that wish to listen. I hope you don't find this too pretentous. But I've watched you make calls that my inexperience would wisper "No Way" could it go that way, and I patiently "Sat" and watched with amazement as you're road map of supports, and resistances unfolded. My Hats off to you. May this thread continue to educate those that want to learn. Best John "I let the craving for excitement get the better of my judgment. The desire for constant action irrespective of underlying conditions is responsible for many losses in Wall Street even among the professionals, who feel that they must take home some money every day, as though they were working for regular wages. A stock operator has to fight a lot of expensive enemies within himself." "I never lose my temper over the stock market. I never argue with the tape. Getting sore at the market doesn't get you anywhere." "There was as much to learn from partial victory as from defeat." "It was never my thinking that made the big money for me. It always was my sitting. Got that?" "Men who can both be right and sit tight are uncommon. I found it one of the hardest things to learn. But it is only after a stock operator has firmly grasped this that he can make big money. The reason is that a man may see straight and clearly and yet become impatient or doubtful when the market takes its time about doing as he figured it must." "That is why I repeat that I never argue with the tape. To be angry at the market because it unexpectedly or even illogically goes against you is like getting mad at your lungs because you have pneumonia." "But the first time I traded because of a crisis that was still to come I found that I had been using a telescope. Between my first glimpse of the storm cloud and the time for cashing in on the big break the stretch was evidently so much greater than I had thought that I began to wonder whether I really saw what I thought I saw so clearly." "That the public did not turn all their paper profits into good hard cash or that they did not long keep what profits they actually took was merely history repeating itself. Nowhere does history indulge in repetitions so often or so uniformly as in Wall Street. When you read contemporary accounts of booms or panics, the one thing that strikes you most forcibly is how little either stock speculation or stock speculators today differ from yesterday. The game does not change and neither does human nature." (Spoken about the 1915-16 speculative bull peak.) "It's not so much greed made blind by eagerness as it is hope bandaged by the unwillingness to do any thinking." "The principles of successful stock speculation are based on the supposition that people will continue in the future to make the mistakes that they have made in the past."