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To: James H. Irwin who wrote (10234)	12/8/1997 10:18:00 PM
From: Patrick Slevin	Respond to of 17305

Did you ever track your trades? Did your ever print out a chart and say to yourself "I was 5 minutes early" there? Later on, "I was 10 minutes early on the exit"? To me that's more important. When I'm trading well I can hit highs and lows pretty good. When I'm not I miss...sometimes by 10 minutes....sometimes completely and stop my self out. Trading index options I sometimes miss because I'm late...but usually if I miss it's because I'm early. If I've been repeatedly early by 5 minutes on average, say, I will look at the clock and wait 5 minutes before I place an order. With futures it makes no difference because I'll have a target entry/exit, but with options or stocks I often do not. Further, I often have a limit so in any event speed of execution may not be the overriding factor. Certainly, execution speed is critical if you are trading a NASDAQ stock that's going into motion (for example). That's a completely different animal. I used to trade that way and if that's what you mean I understand your point completely. But that's not what I'm doing now so it does not mean as much to 'bang' the order as fast.