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To: Haim R. Branisteanu who wrote (253758)	8/3/2003 11:07:51 PM
From: mishedlo	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 436258

I am not sure exactly what to make of this yet but the OI (open interest) on options on key stocks is the lowest level all year. In fact on some stocks it is pathetically low. Take CSCO for example. Often there are 120K options on a single strike on a single SIDE. Heck you can add up the puts and calls together at several strikes and only get to 180 for August. Looking ahead to Sept, you can add EVERYTHING together at EVERY strike and not get to even 60K TOTAL combined. GE IBM INTC C all the same. MSFT has normal Aug options but light sept (not nearly as light as the others). Let's go back to CSCO. Oct has a normal number of options on the call side but bears have given up. Max pain Oct is 15. Normally one does not go out this far for max pain, but it seems that on CSCO anyway (bears have thrown in the towel and all bets for the next two months are bullish). The one problem I have with betting huge down is the sheer number of QQQ puts out there. However looking ahead to OCT they are pretty light that month. It would seem that August should hold 30-31, Sept 28 and then who knows. I am going to go out on a limb here and suggest that max pain is going to work for the next three months, more or less (and that would be the first since February). These are the fewest puts we have seen in a long time and some stocks are well into the insanity stages. what do you think of long longer term puts say Sept and short August puts. If it goes well try again with OCT puts short Sept puts. If that goes well hold the OCTs with tight SLs? M