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Pastimes : Richard Ney and the Wall Street Gang -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: ccryder who wrote (122)	1/20/1998 5:46:00 PM
From: BenYeung	Respond to of 492

Many articles/stories have came naturally to me since I found out about the doings of the exchanges. I recently reread one of my magazine, Details, and found an interesting article about Chris Block and Jeff Burke. These two guys were once Merrill Lynch then Lehman Brothers brokers, and started a SOES trading houses all around the country to let people trade with a NASDAQ II screen for a commission. While the article is mainly about how people would daytrade for small profits and how Block Trading makes huge commissions on the daytrade losers, there were couple mentionings of our fav topic. Here is the extracts from the Oct 1997 issue (on the cover there are six TV goddesses...I mean, celebs in lingerie): "When the market soured..."Your customers werent making any money," explains Chris. You made less. And you started to wonder, Who was actually making money? From an insider's viewpoint, it was pretty clear....."Market Makers have one job description," says Chris. "Rip off the public. If that happens in real estate, people would go insane. It happens everyday in the stock market." "How can we become Market Makers? But these guys are Wall Street's inner circle--Nasdaq has only 500." "SOES traders were nibbling at the MM's huge profits" "Though they are supposedly competitors working for their clients, MMs have a long tradition of "cooperation." Nasdaq is run by the National Association of Securities Dealers, which in turn is run by MMs. "And that," contends Jeff, "is like letting the chemical industry writes rules for chemical companies." "Last year, the SEC and the Justice Department accused the MMs of price-fixing. The rules the NASD had been piling on SOES traders were labeled a sham: One MM had been taped talking about "milking this as long as we can." The SEC provd that MMs had long cooperations on prices. If, for instance, one market maker set more competitive prices, the renegade would get a phone call. A guy with a fake Chinese accent would order some food. "Moo Goo Gai Pan," he'd say, and hang up. It was a code message to get in line." "The NASQ agreed to policing measures mandated by the Justice Department. Block Trading survived. "There is more risk that the NASQ is going to be out of business than we are," Chris says brashly.

To: ccryder who wrote (122)	1/21/1998 2:32:00 AM
From: BenYeung	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 492

Most ECMs and techs beat the heck out of estimates, proven that the currency crisis did not affect US earnings too much. And proved that Wall Street used that as the excuse to drop stock prices from Oct to Dec. I went to Reno, Neveda for the weekend, and played a few hands. I used my trading strategies on the tables and it worked quite well. Made 60 bucks from an initial bet of 2 dollars playing craps and blackjack (I used to play 5 dollar bets and have at least 20 dollars on the table in any minute, but I only play for fun now). Here is some of the guidelines I have been using: (Play and trade interchanges) 1. Play only when you feel hot about the game(market). Dont over play. Dont play every game. Watch for the perfect moment. 2. Use only a small amount of capital to start with. If you make money on the first bet, keep on playing but limit your losses to only the initial bet. Then put more money to your pocket and keep your profit. If you lose on the first bet, sit back, have a beer or more, then come back to play if you feel hot again. 3. Dont borrow others money to play (margin). 4. This only applies to actual gambling: If someone wants to borrow your money, and will share the profit if they make money on that bet, go for it. You dont lose a thing. (One of my friend borrowed some of my cash to play, I shared half of the profit while he will pay me back the capital) 5. Dont take nobody's tips. 6. Dont take huge risk anticipating huge return just because you are down so much. You ll probably end up losing more.