To: Jim Bishop who wrote (87543 ) 6/30/2001 10:28:29 PM From: jeg-4 Respond to of 150070 Just an FYI on Nite and other MM's...Article from aol boards...JG.................... Subject: Why MM are naked shorting Date: 6/29/01 2:26 PM Eastern Daylight Time From: Tistalnadu Message-id: <20010629142617.16814.00003574@ng-fo1.aol.com> If you aren't a broker who is picking up fro $8.00 to $30.00 a trade There is no way you can make any money with spreads of .001 to .005 on the bid and ask. So whats left sell naked short and walk the price down as low as you can with the help of a few friends. john Special Report-Decimals challenge share dealers' profits By Mark Weinraub NEW YORK, June 28 (Reuters) - A penny saved is not a penny earned -- at least not for firms that act as middlemen in U.S. stock trading, Traditional share dealers such as LaBranche & Co Inc. <LAB.N> and Knight Trading Group Inc. <NITE.O> face a rocky road in coming months as the firms struggle to maintain the bumper profits of recent years in the face of a market slump and the seismic shift to trading stocks in pennies. It's going to be ugly. Second-quarter profits for Knight, previously one of the fastest growing firms in the financial sector, are expected to fall by about 80 percent. The weak stock market has hurt companies that trade for their own accounts, just as investors around the world have been hurt by the downturn in the past year. Additionally, the decimalization shift has forced firms to throw out centuries-old trading strategies because profit margins on trades are down and costs to process them are up. "Traders are reactionary in nature," said Benjamin Weinger, managing partner at Blackwood Trading, which provides software to help traders choose where to send stock orders. "People knew that decimalization was coming but no one really knew the extent in which it was going to change the way in which stocks were traded. It has taken some time for traders to adjust to a decimalized environment." Problems plaguing traditional share dealers may be a boon to companies that offer alternative ways to trade stocks, such as Instinet Group Inc. <INET.O> -- a unit of Reuters Group Plc <RTR.L> <RTRSY.O>, which operates the No. 1 electronic communications network (ECN) -- or Investment Technology Group Inc. <ITG.N>, which runs the Posit share trading system. ITG's and Instinet's second-quarter profits are expected to be slightly higher or flat from a year ago. "Instinet focuses more on the institutional investors and the big brokerage houses who are trading big blocks of stocks, and under decimalization it has actually gotten tougher to trade those stocks which has driven people to business like Instinet," Instinet chief executive Doug Atkin said in an interview with Reuters television. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) pushed for the shift to decimals in an effort to cut investor costs by narrowing spreads, the difference between what a buyer and seller are asking for a stock. Spreads on Nasdaq stocks have dropped by an average of more than 50 percent following the shift in April, the No. 2 U.S. equity market said in a report it filed with the SEC. That's bad news for market makers, whose bread-and-butter business is pocketing the spread. Knight Trading, the largest Nasdaq market maker, blamed decimalization when it recently said it may cut 6 percent of its U.S. stocks business' staff. Earlier this week, Merrill Lynch & Co. Inc. <MER.N> shocked Wall Street when it said quarterly earnings would fall far short of estimates, mainly because of a sharp drop in trading revenues. "I think the market is in the process of adjusting to a world decimalization, and it did have some dampening effect on our market-making activities for the quarter," Bear Stearns Cos. Inc. <BSC.N> chief financial officer Sam Molinaro told Reuters earlier this month. Before the shift to decimals, market-makers such as Knight put a rosier spin on the move, saying an expected spike in trading volumes would counterbalance the declining spreads. So far, volumes have not picked up, but it remains to be seen if this is a long-term trend or just the usual summer doldrums. Nasdaq volume slipped almost 15 percent in the ten trading days after the Memorial Day holiday on May 28, compared with the ten days prior to the holiday, according to BigTrends.com. Despite the fall-off in trading after the holiday, volume was still 13 percent higher than the same time frame of 2000. The New York Stock Exchange, Nasdaq's chief rival, has yet to report on the effects of decimalization, but independent studies have shown spreads are also falling on that market. Big Board dealers, who do not pocket the spread, still must contend with the slumping stock market. LaBranche & Co., which acts as a dealer for more than 500 NYSE stocks, has said it expects quarterly profits to fall short of expectations because of the lagging stock market. Wall Street is closely watching Instinet's upcoming profit report, its first as a public company, as a window into the business of other privately owned ECNs. Market watchers have hotly debated the role of ECNs, which once threatened to obliterate traditional stock trading services. Q2 2001 Q2 2000 Company Est. EPS Range Mean Actual EPS Instinet Group $0.17-$0.20 $0.18 $0.18 Investment Technology Group $0.57-$0.61 $0.59 $0.54 Knight Trading Group $0.00-$0.18 $0.11 $0.53 LaBranche & Co. $0.26-$0.39 $0.28 $0.41 -- Source: Thomson Financial/First Call