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To: Andrew Vance who wrote (10187)	12/7/1997 4:13:00 AM
From: Patrick Slevin	Respond to of 17305

(Off-Topic) Nice post...well considered. Unfortunately, all 3 of my kids think I'm smart, not dumb. I imagine they think I'll live forever and support 'em. Like you, I'm sure, coming from a background where cash was scarce and watching your kids in an environment where cash is far less of an issue puts me in a position where I'm a bit out of touch. Jackie throws up her hands when it comes to the older boys. Their realm of academia is not in her areas of expertise so she concentrates on the youngest and I'm left with the others. The second one is lucky. He has more problems with schoolwork. I took him out of the local public school and sent him down to Newark to my old prep school. I gotta tellya, I pulled more strings than a puppeteer working him in there. Perhaps they would have taken him anyway but I had to get him out of that environment you spoke of, where kids look more like homeless people than students. After about 3 weeks they wanted to chuck him out.... Anyway, as I said he's lucky because he has problems. I blocked out 3 days and 5 nights just to get him up to speed on Science and Math and now he's popping 80s and 90s. Considering his skills are limited I'm not unhappy with him...and I know I'm going to have to pull these intensive study sessions with him on occasion. But the eldest is most frustrating. The kid's real bright and does not work. Satisfied as he is with sub-par work I worry he is heading for a disappointment. He was a great student until about 4 years ago. The ineffective teachers in the parochial school he was in at the time coupled with the time I spent on the second kid allowed him to skate, as no one was on his back. He's in another prep school but got a dose of reality last year when he started out in the honors program and nearly got his head handed to him. Taking it easy for two years, he was not prepared to work hard. Anyway, I got him thru that...Jack helped him in Latin, thank God, language is not one of my better fields......but now he's been dropped to the regular program and skates again. On the positive side, at least he got bored with regular Math and got himself (on his own) upgraded to Honors Math. Sucker...The teacher is an old classmate of my brother, is a major taskmaster, and because it's my kid he'll work the life out of him. I think I took him down a peg with my remarks about his scores on the PSAT. I know test scores have dropped nationwide since we were taking these tests, but I'm flabbergasted that anyone would be satisfied with mediocre scores. He did not realise they were mediocre...but that's no excuse. I need a more intensive game plan with him. He gets high grades but because he is now in the regular track instead of Honors the grades are coming too easy. When he was in elementary school I sent him to Montclair State College on Saturdays to take advanced courses. Perhaps that's what I should be looking for.... ....anyway, thanks for taking the time. As great as kids are, they certainly age us quick. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ No certain upcoming OEX plays. My trading has been scalping at key points.....shorting here, going long there, covering here. By the time I posted the trade it would be too late to do it, even if you were there reading it at the time. If I see a high probability trade before an open I'll clue you in. Many days have been too choppy to say anything with any degree of certainty. But we'll get 'em.

To: Andrew Vance who wrote (10187)	12/7/1997 11:01:00 AM
From: Patrick Slevin	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 17305

General consensus of opinion that I track seems to be lower into mid-month then up into the end of the month and into January. This is broad market, of course. One fellow, Gene Inger, points out something that bears repeating here. He notes that the net inflows in mutual funds argues that such investors are naive. Because people should not buy fund shares pre-distribution and thus pay for the gains of others. Also, he notes the wild card of insider selling after the new year due both to lower tax rates as well as deferring taxes another year. His argument is based on the number of recent filings of intent-to-sell. Unfortunately for me, the general opinion is for a follow-thru Monday. Unfortunate because I retained a small put position over the weekend. These guys/ladies are looking for a mean target of 8700 DJIA before another reversal. This is posted for information purposes only. I have no idea at this point how I'll trade this week....except it's likely that once the market seems to run out of steam short-term I'm probably looking for lower prices mid-week...perhaps then bouncing early Friday. Still nothing on a high-percentage play.

To: Andrew Vance who wrote (10187)	12/7/1997 12:01:00 PM
From: Jeffrey S. Mitchell	Respond to of 17305

AV, as former children, we adults should know that no matter what we say and do, kids will always be 1) influenced by their peers (to gain acceptance and self-worth), 2) products of their generation (i.e. music, clothing, values), 3) looking for their own identity (i.e. how they are different from their parents), 4) a personality that was not 100% inherited from us (gg), and 5) genetically programmed at birth for certain traits. My father knew early in life that he wanted to be a doctor. He graduated high school 2 years early (top of class) to go to Harvard (Magna), then Yale Med School (thesis prize), then Oxford (Fullbright scholarship) where I was born. As for me, I worked in his lab growing up and liked science, but I never ever thought I wanted to do anything for the rest of my life. Fact is, I knew early on that my mind was more like a laser than a flood light (i.e. if something interested me I seemed to have infinite drive to excel in it; otherwise, I could not have cared less), so academia was not as important to me . Add to that a "slight" (g) problem with authority and a love for sports and suffice to say that all the parenting in the world was not going to change me. I just knew from my early years that I wanted to be my own boss. True enough, I've never had a salaried job in my life. So, the moral of my story is, I plan to tell my children the story of my life and how different I was from my father but that I (think I) turned out OK. We both succeeded on our own terms and both stuck to a core set of morals. Both my mother and father were very good at instilling that simple value of "doing your best"-- which is only something we alone, deep inside, know we are or are not doing. Hope some of this helps! - Jeff