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Strategies & Market Trends : Anthony @ Equity Investigations, Dear Anthony, -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: olivier asser who wrote (90215)	1/27/2005 1:58:14 PM
From: Dave O.	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 122087

< One matter to be resolved in my pending litigation is whether Philip Berber earned $350 million through honest hard work or whether he earned that money through a pattern of racketeering activity targeting IA clients for ruin. > Agreed. But ... and correct me if I'm wrong ... didn't Berber get the $350 million you cite from the sale of Cyber to Schwab? That was a business transaction. And sadly, a lot of people sold at the top, both business people and traders. One could make the point that Schwab overpaid. People make decisions based on emotions at times. You cited Cyber commissions growing from like $5.5 million to $24.5 million in a year or so. Phenominal growth. And that also happened at the time that every Tom, Dick and Harry thought trading was a way to easy money. Perhaps Schwab's people projected continuing strong growth in clients and commissions. They were mistaken. They were short sighted and saw only a runaway bull market. Reality set in, traders dropped like flies as the market tanked. Commissions went down the tubes as traders quit trading. And last, the cost of trading has continued to decline. My commissions have dropped 70-75% since the late 90's. Of course if these supposed traders had realized there are two sides to the market and played the short side also we'd have more traders who survived the past few years. Unfortunately, many of these "wanna be" traders only played the long side.