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To: Eddie Kim who wrote (17217)	2/11/1998 5:11:00 PM
From: Spots	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 97611

>>I mean screwing the small investor instead of screwing each other. I have to ask are we talking about small investors or uninformed investors? I think the distinction is important. I suspect a bunch of us on SI are small investors--virtually all of us compared to Goldman-Sachs. I paid 75 bucks to join SI; others before me paid 40; others before them were free. Lifetime. I pay for an internet connection along with most everyone else; I get real-time quotes for free from a DATEK account (not level-2 or anything). You don't even need to fund the account to get the quotes. I subscribe to the Hulbert Financial Digest which gives me perspective on investment advisors (by and large the net of it is read SI, apply some intelligence, by some reference books that people you trust recommend, do your own thinking, and save your money otherwise). I get a couple of other general info financial publications (Forbes, eg). The whole package costs me less than $400 per year. Am I a small investor? I think so. I'm sure not rich, anyhow, and I have to keep on working every day for a living. I understand this trading phenomenon from background reading and educating myself on SI and numerous other internet resources and etc. etc. Sorry, but I can't agree that the act of making the markets work for you as a market maker equates to "screwing the small investor." I should hasten to add that maybe I've misunderstood what you meant by this comment. If so, please correct me. What the market makers do is make liquid markets, which benefit all investors, small and large. Are there games, manipulations, disparities? Of course. Does that amount to screwing? Well, if you want screwing, go to the BB stocks and drop your pants. The info is there to allow any size investor to get it if they are willing to put the effort into the market. If they're not, they should buy into Fidelity and let them do the screwing in their favor. But I don't buy that these manipulations screw small investors; they screw stupid investors, which I find difficult to fault. To put this another way, the alternative to screwing stupid investors is to destroy liquid markets, which screws everybody (even the stupid investors). A typical government initiative, sounds like. These manipulations give us small investors an opportunity based on our understanding of them. Sorry, I didn't set out to write this treatise/diatribe; it more or less flowed out. My apologies, but here it is anyhow.