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Strategies & Market Trends : The Residential Real Estate Crash Index -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?


To: Wyätt Gwyön who wrote (101306)1/22/2008 12:17:49 PM
From: JBTFDRead Replies (1) | Respond to of 306849
 
but your conspiracy theory makes absolutely no sense.

It does to me. But perhaps that it because I have seen it over and over again.

I just didn't realize there was a term for it.



To: Wyätt Gwyön who wrote (101306)1/22/2008 12:58:11 PM
From: igRespond to of 306849
 
what you guys are saying makes no sense. brokers likely did their clients a huge favor today by being incompetent and not executing orders at the open, the vast majority of which would have been SELL orders. since the market opened on the lows, the brokers saved their clients money in the aggregate.

of course, that doesn't excuse their incompetence, but your conspiracy theory makes absolutely no sense.


SELLs probably did get filled at the lows, and BUYs got filled later at the higher prices. Happens all the time. Happened to me several years ago. Some news came out about some crazy internet stock du jour and I got in at 12 for the gapper. Lo and behold, the next morning it opened at 26. But the volume was insane and I couldn't get a trade confirmation for a few hours. Turned out they filled my SELL a few hours after the open, when the price had fallen to 19.

And now, the rest of the story....

The day before, after the market had closed, I'd told an online friend about the overnight trade I'd entered. I was pretty excited about it, figuring I'd make a lot of money on it. He got excited about it, too, and entered a market BUY on it for the open. He used the same online broker I did, in fact. Waterhouse.

Well, I told him that he was making a mistake, that he'd missed the play and to just keep his powder dry and wait for the next one. But he wanted to get in and nothing would stop him. Well guess what: his BUY got filled immediately at the open, at 26, while my SELL languished 2 hours until the price fell to 19.

Are you getting the picture? Essentially, some market-maker shorted his ass off all morning at the highs (selling to people like my friend) and then covered by buying my shares at the lows. I was so pissed off, I called the SEC and harangued some hapless drone there for a solid hour. I was told that my order was surely filled whenever it came up in the queue, and that the problem was simply that there were too many orders ahead of mine and that's why mine was filled so late. I told them about my friend's order that was filled immediately at the open, even though he'd entered his order a long time after mine, but they just BS'ed me for another 30 minutes until I finally got fed up.

I'm sure there were plenty of mirror image scenarios in this morning's market: MMs and specialists buying with both hands at the open (filling SELL orders), then filling the BUYs later on at much higher prices, and blaming the "the system" for the delays. It's pretty hard to prove anything in these situations.

That's when I quit daytrading and moved into position trading. Live and learn.



To: Wyätt Gwyön who wrote (101306)1/22/2008 1:20:27 PM
From: LabradorRead Replies (1) | Respond to of 306849
 
I thought that today's ABK conference call was positive and there's possibilities for recapitalization or buy-out. Bankruptcy seems to be an overreaction. Their slide show shows book value of $22/share and adjusted book value (for discounting of future premiums) of $55/share.

MBIA Rebounds on Down Day for Market
BOND INSURER MBIA surged Monday after losing 60% of its value late last week. The rally follows a positive take from Barron's on MBIA stock.

In "MBIA: Priced for Catastrophe," Barron's Senior Editor Jonathan Laing argued that investors had overreacted to negative news last week when Moody's put MBIA's credit rating on review for a downgrade.

MBIA surged 40% to $12.01 in mid-day trading Monday, with the help of the Barron's story and news from Ambac Financial Group, the other major bond insurer, which announced that it does not expect to pay much in claims related to bad bonds and the value of its assets is far higher than the market believes.

In his article for Barron's, Laing suggested that MBIA is less exposed to "really-troubled subprime paper" than rival Ambac Financial Group. Also, he wrote that MBIA's triple-A rating "seems to have passed muster with both Fitch and S&P."

Having written negatively on MBIA in the past, Laing wrote, "We can't say that Barron's was surprised by MBIA's fall from grace." He added, "Still we find the current price levels of its debt, credit-default swaps and, yes, even its stock to be absurdly low."

Laing pointed to estimates that give MBIA a conservative liquidation value of $30 to $40 per share. "If true, it would appear that MBIA has a long way to go on the upside, dead or alive," he wrote.



To: Wyätt Gwyön who wrote (101306)1/22/2008 4:11:37 PM
From: Jim McMannisRead Replies (1) | Respond to of 306849
 
They didn't do me any favors. I was looking to buy lower.



To: Wyätt Gwyön who wrote (101306)1/22/2008 9:07:54 PM
From: lifeisgoodRead Replies (2) | Respond to of 306849
 
Look, I don't go for the conspiracy stuff either but there is absolutely NO excuse, short of a nuclear holocaust, for being locked out of my trading account for 2 hours.

No one did me any favors for locking me out of my account. That's just ludicrous. I thrive on volatility.

best...

LIG