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Strategies & Market Trends : The Options Box -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Poet who wrote (5041)	9/16/2000 11:23:26 AM
From: bobkansas	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 10876

Hi Poet ! Regular job has been a pain this week, so I have been watching market from a distance for the most part. A few observations of mine (which may not amount to much): Most people seem to be saying that due to concerns over seasonal time being risky i.e. Sept and Oct....fund tax selling in Oct...lots of IPOs coming on line over next few weeks that could drain liquidity from the market....concerns over price of oil effecting the economy....interest rates slowing the economy in an attempt to obtain a soft landing that also slow economic growth so that current tech stocks valuations must continue to come down....on and on. Keeping the above thoughts in mind, we then have the major brokerage houses who are as greedy (as all of us individual investors)....and the houses AGENDA: is to make money for themselves regardless of who they step on, control the information flow regarding inside market information e.g. using bid and ask to walk stocks up or down in a manipulated fashion....so that they can imo make money illegally (they know where all the stop loss orders are set at, use TA against us knowing how most people use it and therefore try to violate support lines on various stocks and so forth, *set themselves up to be positioned for whatever the next moves in the market might be so e.g. they have bought at the lows (by telling the public through media that growth stocks are way too highly valued, etc. - so that little people get afraid, sell growth stocks and then the houses and their friends buy at the lows....the rest of us must then pile in to buy at higher prices when the overall market moves up. I see this cycle of brokerage misinformation and control occuring over and over again and of course the SEC will not step on the toes of the big money. So what does one do? Views of anyone appreciated here. A few random thoughts of mine. I am not sure that Oct is going to be so bad. Most people thought that after Labor day big money would come off of the sidelines and the market would charge much higher. Such of course did not occur. Now, we are being told to "watch out for October". Why? Could brokerage houses be positioning themselves for the lowest prices, while the little guy stays in cash or goes to cash in the hope at buying at the low in Oct(and THE low is very difficult to get-as we all know---I remember April and it was only intraday lows where one could attempt to buy the low.) I am thinking that using a sign. portion of one's port. to take long positions in an organized way by buying e.g. 1/3, 1/3, 1/3 positions in my favorite stocks over a period of the next few weeks is the safest way to go. DCA is a boring concept but in dealing with the houses may be the safest way to go. I like the idea of taking another sign. portion of one's port. to also dollar cost averageing into buy/write covered call positions so that instead of buying say 500 shares of NTAP and 500 shares of SEBL and then immediately selling calls against these positions, one instead spreads this out (in a systematic pre-planned way) over a period of a couple of weeks so that one obtains different purchases prices and different (e.g. at the money) strike prices. Thus, one does not buy at the high and one can then buy back the calls if the underlying stock tanks...one would have more opportunities to do this because one would not be locked into one strike price...so you use the ups and downs more often to one's hopeful advantage. Trade the calls and maybe keep the stock. While, I have not needed to use the above cc approach to generate money in the past on cc's, I am thinking the above might be a good approach to take. Maybe most people already do the above but I know I have not been very systematic in trying to do this. Any thoughts would be appreciated. Lastly, buying calls on good gorilla stocks when they have tanked has been a good approach for me but only with small amounts at risk so that I reduce the odds of not being able to step to the plate later. Best regards...sorry the above is not too well thought out. I am still waking up on Saturday morning. Bob

To: Poet who wrote (5041)	9/18/2000 9:00:48 AM
From: Perry Ganz	Respond to of 10876

Good Morning Poet from sat morning lurqers post For me, the market is too complex for such a simple approach. I don’t have a take, but (at any given time) several “takes”. Then I let the market tell me which take is currently best by watching which scenario it tracks. I wish I could put my thoghts into words that well I generally agree with him but, I think the big money managers are "shadowing the TA" (I stole that term from "Rande Is" thread.) alls that means is that the moves in stocks will not go as high as we target or as low. "Profit early and Often" Perry