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Pastimes : Brokerage-Chat Site Securities Fraud: A Lawsuit -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Dave O. who wrote (1364)	7/2/2003 9:49:50 PM
From: CountofMoneyCristo	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3143

It seems to me the record of this thread is that it's unmoderated and I have answered some very incisive questions, like Oz made some time ago. The traders who got together at an office were far different; there is no comparison. The traders of whom I was one and on whose behalf I filed these claims -and shortly very well may pave the way for a class action against not only TP but every site out there who pulled this garbage - were independent, didn't go to offices, traded from home. There is a vast difference. For example, Berber's first big client, before he realized the real money was in the brokerage business, was Block Trading, to whom he licensed the execution software he created. I think we all know how Block landed in infamy. I'm sorry, but to state that traders going to sites were fools but those in offices were professionals - well, I see that as exactly the opposite: the offices were a disgrace, almost all of them. Barton in Atlanta is a good example, and All-Tech...the list goes on and on.

To: Dave O. who wrote (1364)	7/2/2003 11:01:13 PM
From: CountofMoneyCristo	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3143

I asked some time ago to hear about trades - history. Would you share some of yours with the thread? Good ones and bad ones, how you executed them, why, and how your thought process operated at the time. That would I am sure be something interesting for SI lurkers to hear. Now I'm not asking for a TA lesson or techno-fundamental analysis or anything like that - just simply "diary of a daytrader." I would also be interested to hear your opinion of Pristine and its analysts, though I will surely understand if you are wary of making any public statements concerning them. Thank-you in advance. As I stated and in the intro to this thread, the only one I ever created at SI, though I've been a member since early 98, all opinions and statements are welcome. There is no question of filtering out anyone or any statement that somehow does not come over as the way anyone wants it. Just be prepared for rebuttal if we disagree...

To: Dave O. who wrote (1364)	7/6/2003 9:03:11 PM
From: Keith Monahan	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3143

Message 19084405 The Wisdom of Pollack Wall Street Journal July 3, 2003 You can learn a lot in 96 years of living, as federal Judge Milton Pollack showed this week in his decision dismissing lawsuits against Merrill Lynch and its famous ex-analyst Henry Blodget over the Internet meltdown. His ruling neatly destroys much of the self-serving rhetoric by which the wildest swingers of the financial markets have tried to transfer to others blame for their failed Internet speculations. This is the judge's second attempt at introducing the reality principle into post-bubble controversies. A year ago he threw out similar complaints against Morgan Stanley and Mary Meeker. In his latest decision, he drives home the obvious: Wall Street analysts are not fiduciary or contractual employees of the people who follow their opinions; their stock recommendations do not come with a warranty. In words with much relevance for the SEC, New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer and the press, he points out that the conflicts inherent in investment banking had "notoriously and long existed and had been variously publicized but not focused on as undesirable conflicts that should be ameliorated, modified, conceivably controlled or eliminated." The plaintiffs now call themselves "victims" of Wall Street. But Judge Pollack refers to them by their true name -- "high-risk speculators" who knew or should have known the "unjustifiable risks they were undertaking in the extremely volatile and highly untested stocks at issue." Their post-bubble lawsuits are merely an attempt to "twist the federal securities laws into a scheme of cost-free speculators' insurance." Poignantly, too, his decision adverts to a second category of Internet speculator, who had the luck or wisdom to sell at the top. "Those few lucky winners, who are not before the Court, now hold the monies that the unlucky plaintiffs have lost -- fair and square -- and they will never return those monies to plaintiffs." Beautiful stuff, and not just because we believe in individual responsibility and free markets. All during the bubble in question, this paper and its journalists reported cogently and accurately on the phenomenon as it unfolded. No reader could have failed to understand that Internet valuations were not justified by normal metrics, that prices were being driven by day traders and "momentum" investors trying to benefit from public euphoria. We pointed out over and over that though the Internet was a technology of great promise, predicting which companies, if any, would capture its immense value for shareholders was a highly uncertain and risky endeavor. If that weren't enough to induce some caution, analyst Jack Grubman's banking conflicts were explored in detail in this paper long before the bubble burst. One group of speculators who don't feature prominently in Judge Pollack's eloquent decision deserves an honorable mention here. These are the thousands of folks who came up short but aren't putting their names on any lawsuit. Reading the press, you'd think everybody in America was looking for somebody to blame (and sue) for whatever goes wrong. It can't hurt occasionally to remember the non-suing, silent majority. Without their willingness to take responsibility for their own financial decisions, the stock markets could not do their job of directing capital (most of the time) to its best uses. URL for this article: online.wsj.com Updated July 3, 2003