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Pastimes : A Jackass, his PAL(indrome), and GOLD -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jim Willie CB who wrote (639)	2/6/2003 1:06:27 AM
From: Sully-	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1210

35, if you start from the forehead & go down ;-) OOF Ö¿Ö

To: Jim Willie CB who wrote (639)	2/7/2003 1:29:04 PM
From: T L Comiskey	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1210

jim..break out the crying towels... Alligator tears..all about...............S.O.B.(s) T Dow Jones Business News Goldman Sachs to Cut 20% of its Option Traders Friday February 7, 12:18 pm ET By Kopin Tan NEW YORK -- Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (NYSE:GS - News) said it will lay off about 20% of the more-than 220 option traders it employs in its option specialist and market- making business, as shrinking profit margins continue to take a toll on the option-trading business. The cutbacks show how even the largest U.S. option specialist firm isn't immune to the belt-tightening facing option market makers, which provide liquidity and ensure orderly trading in the options market. This round of layoffs affects just traders in the options, and not the stock specialist, side of its floor-trading operation, said people with knowledge of the matter. Goldman's SLK-Hull Derivatives unit is the specialist in more than 1,000 option classes. With operations at each of the five U.S. option exchanges, it trades practically every one of the most actively traded options including Intel Corp. (NasdaqNM:INTC - News) , General Electric Co. (NYSE:GE - News) , Dell Computer Corp. (NasdaqNM:DELL - News) and the Nasdaq 100 Tracking Stock, or QQQ. With the layoffs, SLK-Hull also is expected to relinquish some of the mandates - or option classes - for which it is currently option specialist. Details of any such shuffling of specialist books aren't immediately available, and the exchanges are working to reallocate those specialist books to other firms. But the move likely involves only the less robustly traded option classes. As trading volume growth slowed over the past year - particularly from " retail" or individual investors whose orders are most coveted by floor traders - many specialist firms have also begun pulling back their operations at the option exchanges. Played out over time, traders say this could leave more option classes, especially the less heavily traded names, listed at fewer exchanges. The layoffs at Goldman were first reported Friday by the New York Post. It also prompted talk among traders that Goldman Chief Executive Henry M. Paulson was disappointed with the SLK-Hull unit, and that the integration of the various acquisitions that formed SLK-Hull was not working financially and culturally. A Goldman spokesman denied such talk. "That is completely untrue, and the integration with Spear Leeds & Kellogg and the other options units have been highly successful and profitable," he said. Goldman had made a big bet on the option market-making business when it spent billions to acquire Hull Trading, Spear Leeds & Kellogg and TFM Investments over the past four years to form what is now SLK-Hull. -By Kopin Tan; Dow Jones Newswires; 201-938-2202; kopin.tan@dowjones.com