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

To: Rande Is who wrote (23965)	4/14/2000 2:34:00 PM
From: JLS	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 57584

Thanks, good point. So after 3:30, we'll really know what the story is I suspect.

To: Rande Is who wrote (23965)	4/15/2000 4:15:00 PM
From: Gary Wisdom	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 57584

Rande, re: your comment on margin selling between 2 and 3:30 and next Wednesday Brokerage houses can (and do) sell out stock at any time of the day. The magnitude of these swoons in anything internet (for the most part) has created a backlog or if you will, priority list for every brokerage firm. They are all overtaxed by the amount of margin calls that this market has generated and are putting out the biggest fires first and then working down the list. Accounts that are under the minimum maintenance requirements by a few % points are the least of their concerns and they get around to them eventually. Anyone that has any stock that has worked its way down 50 then 60 then 70 then 80 and some down 90 percent from the highs has gotten margin calls, even if they had as little as 10% margin. All you have to do to figure that out is the math. Take the fairly conservative investor that puts up 80% of the value of the trade. For example, buy 1000 shares of a $100 stock ($100,000) and put up $80,000. When the stock hits $60, you still have 67% equity. When it hits $40, you have 50% equity. When it hits $30, you have a maintenance call. There's several hundred stocks that were cut in half this week alone. Big names and small names alike. For the last few weeks, people with resources brought checks into their brokerages to "hang on". Those without resources got blown out. The last few days, those that put more money in got blown out. On Friday, everyone else that held these stocks got blown out by margin clerks. Everyone. Sorry about the lengthy message, but if you're looking for one of those classic 4 day margin blowouts coming, I don't agree anymore. There are few left alive in this debacle. Monday might start off ugly but 3227 is a 50% retracement of this last Naz advance (heard that from Larry Wachtel without verifying but I'd tend to believe him). That's about a hundie more points down. IMHO, that's where we'll stop going down for awhile. BWDIK.