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To: J.N.N. who wrote (11312)	2/27/2000 9:12:00 PM
From: Jon Tara	Respond to of 18366

There is no way to tell if the shares were bought or sold. Where would you get that information? If you THINK there is a way to get that information, you are wrong. Did you mean to say that there were 60,000 shares that changed hands at the offer? That doesn't mean that they were sold. It just means that they changed hands at the offer. For those that changed hands on ECNs, there were a public buyer and public seller on each side of most of those transactions. (There also may have been market-makers on one side or the other of some of them, but there is no way to tell who either side of any of the transactions were.) For those transactions that involved a MM, again there is no way to tell who was on the other side of the transaction. Using a good L2, yes, you can tell how many shares each MM has transacted. But you can't determine how many were buys and how many were sells. You can't tell who was on the other side of the transaction - was it the public, or was it another MM? There is no way to tell. If you made the assumption that a transaction at the offer is a "buy" by the public, and represents the MM depleting inventory, you'd be wrong. There is simply no way to tell. Perhaps the MM didn't HAVE any inventory to start with, and shorted the stock. Or perhaps it was an order that the MM was representing for a customer. (They are now required to do that.) So, transactions are going-off at the offer. But do you know if the MM bought or sold? No, you don't. You just know that the transaction occured at the offer. A MM might have bought at the offer, increasing his inventory. He might have sold at the offer, depleating inventory. A MM might have bought from another MM, increasing one's inventory and depleating the other. One or the other MM might have been making the transaction on behalf of a customer. There is, simply, no way to tell. If you think there is, you are fooling yourself.

To: J.N.N. who wrote (11312)	2/27/2000 9:16:00 PM
From: cAPSLOCK	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 18366

Where did these shares come from? If the market makers did not have this in inventory they would go short until they could get their hands on enough shares to cover their 'position'. People have such wild visions of market makers as monsters with rows of teeth with no other goal than to hurt Joe six-pack. Of course to the extent they bet against someone in the market they are being bet against... so who has all the teeth? And really market makers are more interested in holding no inventory for the most part. They don't care if a stock goes up or down over the long term. They make their dough from the spread you see on an issue. The price on a stock is moved to equalize their position usually. are some dishonest? Sure... those folks are everywhere... unparanoidedly, cAPSLOCK