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Strategies & Market Trends : Booms, Busts, and Recoveries -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: HairBall who wrote (11233)	11/23/2001 2:49:59 AM
From: Raymond Duray	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74559

Hi LG, Re: I disagree; the taxpayers never seem to get it. Its a rigged game and always has been. You're right, of course. The general public never does seem to catch on. I was thinking more along the lines of the tranformation the markets went through in the early 1930's, with the creation of the SEC and the separation of merchant and investment banking. This was imposed from the top, and the public never had a lot of influence, as you say. Except to vote in FDR, who took up the challenge at the highest levels. Re: The secret is to discern the house "intent", rarely easy, but always worth the effort Apparently, this prescience is the only thing holding me back from my first billion..... <vbg> More seriously, I've come to the conclusion that the house is one of several influences, many of which have opposing impacts on the markets. Besides the house, there's retail sentiment, the influence of the hedge funds, the bondsman, foreign investors seeking a forex advantage, futures markets, mutual funds, pension fund managers, Fed policy, breaking news, and a number of other influences. My efforts to quantify which factor is ascendant at any given time have met with some temporary success and even more confusion. That said, I'm not so sure I'm complete agreement with you that the "houses" have control of events. For example, when LTCM went down, David Komansky and a number of other Merrill execs took a pretty good hit, being blindsided by the precipitous decline in that house of cards. A similar example from today would be the amazingly shrinking Enron. Goldman-Sachs has certainly been caught unawares by this meltdown, both as a lender and as a counterparty to ENE's hedging. In other words, the house doesn't always win. <smile> Best, Ray