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Technology Stocks : Cymer (CYMI) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: mauser96 who wrote (7579)	10/31/1997 2:39:00 PM
From: Mr. Aloha	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 25960

(50) 1,000 share trades has more impact than (1) 50,000 share trade. The Market Maker get's nervous when a bunch of consecutive sell trades comes though. They start to lower the bid because they might not be selling those recently sold shares to a new buyer at the time. They could be holding them in their account. They need to stay on top of the market and don't like to left long or short. They will move quickly to avoid a bad situation. On the 550 down day the price fell immediately to something like $21-22. With such a heavy percentage of sells to buys, the MM dropped the price to a point that others bought or seller's freaked. In the meantime a 50,000 share trade might have bought and another 5,000 share bought. That would mean that technically the day was positive (green) because there was more accumulation than distribution. :-) Aloha

To: mauser96 who wrote (7579)	10/31/1997 2:49:00 PM
From: D.J.Smyth	Respond to of 25960

i'll address this later Lucius

To: mauser96 who wrote (7579)	10/31/1997 6:20:00 PM
From: Mason Barge	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 25960

<<I still say every sell has to have a buy to match it off>> This is logical and theoretically correct, but miscomprehends how stocks are bought and sold. Or more likely, refuses to understand the meaning of the terminology. Simply put, a sell side trade is one that tends to depress the price of a stock. When there are more people who want to sell at a certain price than want to buy at a certain price, it pressures the stock down. Think of scalpers at a baseball game. If all the scalpers have "tickets to sell" signs then the trades are sell-side trades and the price trend will be lower. If all the signs are "want to buy" signs, then the trades are going to be buy-side and trend higher. Suppose you have two $30 tickets you want to sell. If all the signs say "want to buy", you are going to sense that supply is tight and hold out for more money than if all the signs say "tickets for sale". So, if you are a market maker and see 500,000 shares of CYMI suddenly appear for sale at 23, and only 80,000 shares (other than your own bid block of say 10,000 at 23) bid at 22 7/8, and the current market is 23 by 23 1/8 trending down, you are going to lower your bid in a hurry. You can see downward momentum and you don't want to be stuck with 500,000 of Cymer at 23 in a declining market. In fact, you'll probably hope to pick up some of them at 22 3/4 and then drop your bid again. If 100,000 shares sell at 23, the sale was on the "sell-side". It's just an expression. Obviously, every share sold at 23 has a buyer at 23. But the sale can put negative or positive pressure on a stock's price, depending on the condition of the market at the time of the sale. This isn't open for debate, it's just a matter of terminology you need to understand. Trying to read supply and demand at a certain price, often in an instant, is an art form practiced by professional traders. They KNOW what they're talking about. If you ever have a chance to watch at least a Level II quote stream in an active stock, you'll see what everyone's talking about.