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To: Voltaire who wrote (11029)4/4/2000 11:30:00 PM
From: stomper  Respond to of 35685
 
screams of heretic echo throughout the Big Top...hehehe

-dave



To: Voltaire who wrote (11029)4/4/2000 11:41:00 PM
From: stockman_scott  Respond to of 35685
 
V: How's the view from the porch tonight?...

I was in meetings in Indianapolis today and missed all the wild activity in the market....Haven't sold a thing recently....It's a blessing I have a LONG time horizon for my investments...When do you think the Naz will start a sustained recovery? Inquiring minds want to know <G>...

Regards,

Scott
---------------------------------------------------------

BTW, Here is an interesting article I just discovered...

<<Tuesday April 4, 5:42 pm Eastern Time
Forbes.com
Market's Psyche Stirs Volatility
By Marius Meland

The market's nerve-wrecking volatility reflects a deep struggle between the two primal emotional forces in the investor's psyche that drive the market: greed and fear.

So says a prominent market psychiatrist who thinks the market's peaks and dips mirror the emotional swings of investors who are beginning to seriously question stock prices after the longest bull market in history.

At one point today, the tech-laced Nasdaq Composite Index dropped a stunning 13% before it staged a recovery and ended the day down some 1.8%. (On Oct. 19, 1987, the Nasdaq shed 11.35%.) Yesterday, the index dropped 7.6% amid the worst decline since August 1998. In the blue-chip market, meanwhile, the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 4% today before it also reversed intraday losses to cap the day with a loss of 0.4%.

``We're seeing panic creep in, and if the market continues to fall on Wednesday it could become widespread. The market is dominated by the two sentiments of greed and fear, and the combination of fear and a herd mentality is potentially explosive,' says John Schott, a psychiatrist who teaches a course at Harvard about market psychology and comanages client portfolios for Steinberg Global Asset Management.

Schott, who also publishes a newsletter on market psychology, thinks the direct cause of the market's roller-coaster ride this week--the outcome of the Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT - news) antitrust trial--is merely an excuse for a broad selloff. The deeper underlying cause is crumbling market confidence because of the high valuations in the tech sector.

``Because greed has had the upper hand, many investors--even institutional ones--have been in denial over the troublesome rise in valuations. Greed works like a kind of buffer, so it will take several severe blows to ignite fears in investors,' says Schott.

Over the past few weeks, there have been plenty of such blows, including the restatement of Microstrategy's (Nasdaq: MSTR - news) earnings, the partial retreat from equities by influential Goldman, Sachs strategist Abby Cohen, and the collapse of settlement talks between the government and Microsoft.

In fact, Schott thinks stocks are already well on their way into a bear market. Even though indexes are up on the year, the negative breadth and the peaks of many industry indexes, such as the Dow Jones Industrial Transports, tells a different story. Now many people are beginning to question whether the bull market is finally over, and that's beginning to wear on the overall market confidence.

Schott says most investors tend to overestimate their tolerance for pain in the form of losses. Investors typically overestimate their tolerance by a factor of two, so that an investor who thinks he can handle a 30% loss actually begins to panic when the market tumbles 15%.

``Up until now, this bull market has been a sucker's game. There are a lot of people who have gained a lot of self-esteem from their performance in the market. We've all met people who brag about their portfolio gains at cocktail parties. Now that the market is plunging, it also takes the bottom out of these people's self-confidence, and they are beginning to panic,' says Schott.

In contrast, he says, people who stay calm during a panic are of an altogether different caliber. They tend to be people with a high level of self-confidence who don't derive their self-esteem from the market, and who have a clear-cut system of investing that they stick to consistently.

These are the people who typically manage to step on the brakes in a panic by starting to buy when everybody else is selling, says Schott.

``Many of these investors are value-oriented, and they actually help stabilize the market. When stock prices go up too much, they'll start shorting. When the market drops to attractive levels, they step in to buy,' he says.

Go to www.forbes.com to see all of our latest stories.>>



To: Voltaire who wrote (11029)4/5/2000 12:03:00 AM
From: Boplicity  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 35685
 
Slow rolling deep laughter. as in belly laugh

Thanks,

PS I had a I HAVE SEEN ENOUGH moment around 1:30 today, I normally get those in Oct. strange to get it this time of the year, starting buying. I hope everyone else did. And yes we will retest, just not as far down as we did today.

For you Jim W.

securitytrader.com

The vol. will be the key. High vol. and no movement will be bad, high vol. and more selling will be bad, low vol. and no moment will be ok, and of course high vol. to the upside will be fantastic, but not expected.

Greg



To: Voltaire who wrote (11029)4/5/2000 12:14:00 AM
From: John T.  Respond to of 35685
 
All Calamity Howlers Must Be Destroyed ---

Hi Voltaire. I'm also sick and tired of listening to Lucretius Taurus, et al and their negative calamity howling.



To: Voltaire who wrote (11029)4/5/2000 9:13:00 AM
From: No Mo Mo  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 35685
 
:)

You moved in like a virus infecting a virgin body...the clowns are usually the ones who raid other threads. Those boys just love to fight.
Good for you for giving them a taste of their own.

Smiling
-Darin



To: Voltaire who wrote (11029)4/5/2000 3:20:00 PM
From: Boplicity  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 35685
 
This fits with your post to the clowns.

<<From: T L Comiskey Wednesday, April 5, 2000 11:11 AM ET
Reply # of 70268

(Twice Borrowed....)
Borrowed from Yahoo Elon thread.
HOW STOCKS TURNED BACK FROM THE ABYSS

By JOHN CRUDELE

SOMETHING happened at around 1 p.m. our time
yesterday that pulled the stock market back from the
edge of the cliff. Traders say it was almost like divine intervention. One minute the Nasdaq was down 11
percent -- say it out loud, "Eleven percent in one
day" -- and then it suddenly rallied several hundred
points in the matter of an hour.

The Dow followed suit. Down 500 points around mid-day,
the blue chip index's decline -- along with the
horrible showing of over-the-counter stocks -- was
destined to make yesterday's market an unqualified
disaster for investors and the country.

Then, traders said, someone started buying large
amounts of stock index futures contracts through
two major brokerage firms -- Goldman Sachs and
Merrill Lynch. These transactions are usually done
on the QT so we don't really know how many of these
contracts were purchased.

And unless the brokers tell, there is no way of
knowing which of their clients were making the
purchases. Goldman wouldn't comment on this and
Merrill did not return a call for comment.

But traders said enough were bought to catch
everyone's attention. In fact, the buyers seemed
to want people to know they had an appetite for stocks.

Then the market rebounded.

It didn't go all the way back. At the end of the
day the Dow Jones index had still lost lost 56 points
or half a percent on the day. And the Nasdaq lost
another 74 points, or the equivalent of a 1.77
percent drop. Yesterday's loss by over-the-counter
stocks nearly put the Nasdaq index back to ground
zero for the year -- in two days all but 2 percent
of its gain for the year was gone.

It was real nice of Goldman and Merrill to stick
their necks out like that. In fact, it was downright uncharacteristic for Wall Street outfits to put the
thought of possible losses aside for the greater good.

Because of the purely unselfish nature of what went
on, traders are naturally suspicious. Hell, so am I.

"I think some one or more persons saved the market
today. There was a suspicious urge to buy stocks at
an opportune time," says one trader. "Why drive the
Dow up 350 points in a half hour? That's never
serious buying. That's someone trying to establish
prices," he adds.

I'm especially suspicious when the market suddenly
rebounds at nearly the very same moment that a member
of the Clinton administration -- economic advisor
Gene Sperling -- is on TV telling investors not to worry.

cont'd

And there's the obvious connection between Goldman
Sachs and the administration, the Wall Street firm
having given Robert Rubin to the Clinton administration
as its Treasury Secretary.

Plus, what better way to make investors not worry
than by having the stock market recover a lot of the
ground it had just lost. That gesture almost makes
a guy want to buy some stock -- bottom fish, if you
are into sporting analogies.

I'm not saying that government intervention in a
collapsing market is wrong. In fact -- except for
the obvious contradictions with the free-market
system -- it is politically and socially a very
right thing to do.

I've written about this before. And I've mentioned
that Washington has had a secretive group call the
Working Group on Financial Markets, made up of
investment industry and government people, that
would be in just the right position to rescue the market.

Informally the folks on Wall Street call this the
"Plunge Protection Team." In February 1997, the
Washington Post did a piece on this team, just i
n case you don't believe it exists.

And while I can't swear that Goldman and Merrill
are captains of that team, they sure acted
like it yesterday. >>

g