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Gold/Mining/Energy : International Precious Metals (IPMCF) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: E. Charters who wrote (24482)	11/5/1997 4:31:00 PM
From: Gerald Walls	Respond to of 35569

Who is it that generally posts the tick-by-tick report? Could whoever that is please post today's activity? It would be interesting to see how smaller vs larger blocks moved the spread today.

To: E. Charters who wrote (24482)	11/5/1997 4:53:00 PM
From: Furry Otter	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 35569

<<But if lots of people were buying don't you think the MM's would up the offers?>> Yes, but this is only half the equation. We know for a fact that some of the MMs are short this stock, which indicates that they want to take the price down as low as possible. To determine whether people are buying, watch how many shares go at the ask...I have been, and I see a lot of buying. I have also seen the bid dropped a quarter point or more on tiny block sales of totalling less than 10,000 shares, even when they are offset by at least that much buying, if not more. This is called "slamming the bid," and it enables the MMs to drop the bid/ask down and pick off stop-losses. We saw more of this today <<So 150,000 shares a day for 8 days on a steady drop is paltry action?>> Yes, when you figure (1) 150,000 really means closer to 65,000 to 75,000, given the way NASDAQ operates; (2) at least half, if not more, of those 65-75k were trades within the spread, which strongly indicates that they were simply trades between MMs to increase volume and stimulate interest; (3) of the remaining 35,000, another half (if not more) were buys, leaving (4) about 15-20k shares per day being sold. Not exactly an exodus, is it? <<when you see a block trade between houses that HAS to be the house trading not its customers bundled in a block>> When I see a trade between houses within the spread, meaning at a price between the prevailing bid and ask, yes, I generally conclude that it is basically a circle jerk between MMs...this is esp. the case if the trade is a small block, i.e. under 1000 shares, as is often the case with IPM. Regards, Otter