Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Microcap & Penny Stocks : TGL WHAAAAAAAT! Alerts, thoughts, discussion. -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Katie Kommando who wrote (32739)	3/3/2000 2:55:00 AM
From: Jim Bishop	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 150070

Interesting. I can't believe some of the emails I get addressed to "group leaders" telling about some stock that a bunch of "groups" are planning on running. I used to post some of them, more as a warning than anything else. I won't do that anymore, I remember some people here were jumping on those every second Friday ones, and getting burned thinking they were something we were buying. I got caught in one once...luckily I got out before it tanked too much. We stick to posting what we see, what we are buying, what is happening at the moment, charts, news, and good DD, and no one should have a problem with anything here.

To: Katie Kommando who wrote (32739)	3/3/2000 2:55:00 AM
From: Katie Kommando	Respond to of 150070

Nasdaq Will Have Problems Switching Over to Decimals By TERZAH EWING Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL The Nasdaq Stock Market is likely to have problems converting to decimal-based trading from fraction-based, according to a report released Wednesday by the General Accounting Office. The report said Nasdaq, owned by the National Association of Securities Dealers, has told the Securities and Exchange Commission it won't be ready "until the first quarter of 2001 to accommodate [Nasdaq's] own lower estimates of the increased message traffic expected from decimal trading with penny increments." Moreover, the study said Nasdaq will not be able to participate in two industry-wide decimal-trading tests scheduled for April and May but will participate in a June test. The SEC in January issued an order requiring certain market participants, including Nasdaq, to be ready to begin decimal-based trading in nickel increments by July 3. The market participants are supposed to submit plans for implementing decimalization by March 13. Scott Peterson, a spokesman for Nasdaq, confirmed that Nasdaq won't be ready for trading in penny increments until 2001 and said that Nasdaq is "in the process of testing our technical solutions to convert to decimals in July." He said, "The risk is having enough capacity to handle an explosive increase in message traffic, which has already multiplied more than four-fold in the past two years and more than 2 1/2 -fold in the last nine months." Mr. Peterson added that Nasdaq "will move forward when we are certain that our technical solution and the solutions of our market participants will be able to handle the huge increase in message traffic." The GAO study also said the country's options exchanges will face an even greater challenge than Nasdaq. One options-market official, according to the GAO report, has said the necessary capacity increases would "require enough telephone lines to support a small city." Bernard Madoff, head of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities, said the report's findings aren't surprising, particularly with regard to a conversion to penny increments. "A lot of people underestimated the difficulty of going to pennies. It wasn't a problem of nickels," he said. "When a lot of these timetables were negotiated you didn't have the trading volumes or the volatility of trading that you have today, at Nasdaq in particular. It's more of a problem for them because they already have more market-markers updating their quotes more often." Mr. Madoff added that most industry participants likely won't be surprised by the problems, though he thinks stock-market participants will prefer to move into decimal trading all at once. "Everybody in the industry understands capacity problems. I don't see this as a major issue. Write to Terzah Ewing at terzah.ewing@wsj.com