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Strategies & Market Trends : Anthony @ Equity Investigations, Dear Anthony, -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: mcweazy who wrote (64182)	12/6/2000 5:33:05 PM
From: Walkingshadow	Respond to of 122087

Hi mcweazy, I'm still licking my wounds from yesterday. What a squeeze!! Only position left is a short position via puts on CIEN, which I'm upside down on now. That's because I only use time stops on options. Might have to rethink that one since I'm so upside down on it now, but using dollar stops it is too easy for the options pits to gun the stops. You can get the float and information on the short shares held from a variety of sources. Yahoo is one: biz.yahoo.com You can see that about half the float is held short. I use several brokers, including Firstrade, Suretrade, and the Executioner. I've got a couple of others, but never trade thru them. They're just holding tanks. Firstrade and Suretrade have cheap up-front commissions, and are convenient because they are web-based, so you can trade from any terminal. But as with all these types of brokers, you get bad executions because they get paid for order flow, so there's always a middleman skimming the spread, sometimes more than one. And finally, the MM makes sure he gets his take. The advantage of the Executioner is that you have both Level II and Level III access, i.e., you trade directly via one of the ECNs, so in effect you can directly see in real time what the spread is, who the participants are with the orders showing, and can jump right into and out of the spread just like any MM might do. This type of system (i.e., direct access, or L III) is very useful for daytrading, and anything else puts you at a disadvantage. Also, the executions are extremely fast, sometimes only a second or even less for heavily trading stocks. The commissions and fees are more, but in the end it is probably cheaper than using a web-based system with the middlemen, because you're trading directly and so the executions are much better. The downside is that you have to download software, which is nice because you don't have a web browser to negotiate, but not so nice because you can't go to any PC and just trade. If you're home (or someplace where you can trade) alot during market hours, this is ideal, however. It is not an easy decision to pick a broker. A good broker for me might not be right for you at all. You might want to check out the information on Gomez.com regarding brokers. They give some pretty good comparisons. gomez.com gomez.com I'm sitting in cash right now until I get a feel for whether this is the start of a countertrend rally, or just a brief but spectacular flash in the pan, with the downtrend about to continue. I like to weight my long/short positions according to the general market trend, which right now I'm uncertain of. But, I remain convinced that most of the major events which accompany market bottoms have not occurred yet. This is not the start of the new bull market, IMHO, and I wouldn't be surprised if this did not occur for a year or even two. WS