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To: augieboo who wrote (51642)	8/29/2002 12:41:43 AM
From: skinowski	Respond to of 209892

The methods you mentioned may work... but it would be one heck of a money management challenge.. -bg I find it more useful to watch boards (or threads) that are generally less sophisticated about market action. Don't forget that most market participants don't do TA. On a few occasions, I noticed, Bill O'Reilly called bottoms - when he gets exited, probably from losing money, and starts raising hell about the markets. -g/ng.

To: augieboo who wrote (51642)	8/29/2002 2:22:02 AM
From: LTK007	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 209892

BOO wrote<Freep, do you think people really make trades based on their perceptions of sentiment on these threads?> and BOO then wrote some more < But I am hard pressed to think of a more stupid way to waste one's money, except perhaps via spitballs, i.e., flick a spitball at the ceiling, and if it sticks, go long, if not, go short, if it hangs by a thread of saliva, try a spread or straddle, etc...> them thar be true words , worthy of a Bichon Frise.(that's a compliment for those not understanding:) GD.

To: augieboo who wrote (51642)	8/29/2002 9:00:28 AM
From: bcrafty	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 209892

Augie, a good thought you've brought up Since I've been posting here I've also wondered about people using threads as perceptions of sentiment. The only thread where I see it actively mentioned is this one, where I occasionally see several regular posters on this board mention that the have visited unspecified boards and gauged the sentiment there. When I first saw people doing this I wondered why anyone assumes that message boards are an appropriate microcosm of traders/investors on which to gauge sentiment. Nobody knows how many people are posting on message boards each day, but I think it's a very small small number of the total number of traders/investors that are out there. Many have no time for posting, others just lurk, some of them are just not interested to post, some trades/investors don't even know how to turn on a computer. Even if one could somehow ascertain what percentage of the investing public regularly posts on message boards, the next unknown is the trading timeframe of the posters. I have mentioned this countless times on this board, as I have a difficult time trying to figure out if people are intending on holding their positions for minutes, hours, days, weeks, or months because they are never clear on this in their posts. To me this is significant because one can be for example bearish on the 15-minute charts, bullish on the dailies, and bearish on the weeklies all at the same time and unless they make their timeframe clear, we don't know which period they're speaking of, i.e. are we going down for the next few hours? next few days? next few weeks? etc. To compound this problem, many posters mix their timeframes in their posts, or worse yet, they use long term scenarios to try to support their views on short term moves without giving any explanation on how that's a justifiable position to take in the current environment, For example two weeks ago I saw a poster mention how shorting any resistance has been the way to go for the last several months. Well, if you're a daytrader doing short swing trades on the 15-minute charts, that poster's advice might have gotten you killed last week and the week before because we rallied, although in a longer timeframe the poster's advice might have been more well taken. Also, I just don't think the idea of thinking "well, everybody on such-and-such board is bearish, therefore I'm turning bullish" is a good idea at all. While I understand the concept on contrarian investing, I let the charts tell me what to do rather than specific people. People seem to be wrong more than the charts do, if you know what I mean. I also think there's a certain amount of (attempted) ego gratification going on psychologically here where a poster is basically saying, whether he realizes it or not, that "I'm fading so-and-so because he's dumb and I'm smart." Instead of trying to figure out who is smart and who is not, I think it's best to follow the charts instead and leave this part of it out of the equation. Just when you think you've got you've got everything figured out is usually when situations turn around and bite you for doing so.