Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Pastimes : Ask Mohan about the Market -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bonnie Bear who wrote (15310)	4/2/1998 1:40:00 AM
From: posthumousone	Respond to of 18056

is it positive to US with japan tanking?? $ has ot go somewhere? but wont that further cripple asia economy which would effect us? i give up

To: Bonnie Bear who wrote (15310)	4/2/1998 2:07:00 AM
From: Bilow	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 18056

Hi Bonnie; I'm going to take GURU as a compliment... I paper day-traded the nasdaq today, and got lots of (fake) profits. It's not as easy a game as one might think, you have to beat the market, plus the spread, plus commissions. If the market were efficient, this would be impossible. One of the things they drill into you is to not bother with what the companies you buy do. It isn't material when you are going to sell them the same day anyway. My big winner for the day was THNK. I bought it after it broke through to a new all time high, at 18 15/16, then held all day to sell it at 23. Cut your losses, and let your profits run, they say. Daytrading is a fascinating game. I could tell from the level 2 screen that an institution(s) was buying THNK all day. The symbol is INCA. When their symbol disappeared from the bid side at noon NY time, the stock slowly fell a half point. I was up $2, but I figured they'd be back after lunch, and sure enough, they drove the stock up another $2.. That sort of information is just not available to the guy using Schwab. The essence of daytrading is to use your extra market visiblity and quick reflexes to front run the other participants. If Bezos comes up for a TV interview, we all bring up an AMZN screen. As soon as he says something positive, we all buy. When Mr. Public driving back to work from lunch keys up Schwab to buy in, we've already got the shares for him. If a stock makes a new high, we know it in seconds, and bring up a screen. If it looks safe, we buy in. Five minutes later, the radio announces that MSFT just set a new all time high. But we've already bought in, long before Mr. Public hears about it. Even if Mr. Public constantly watches a ticker, we beat him, cause it only takes the following key strokes for us to buy 1000 shares of AMZN: "AMZN :", a total of 6 touch-typed key strokes. The Schwab guy gets asked by the program if he is really sure he wants to buy, etc., etc., so it takes at least 10 seconds to get in. Similarly short selling an arbitrary stock is just 6 strokes. If we already have that stock as the active one, the buy or sell is a single key stroke. The other guys still have their guns in their holsters. If we notice Goldman Sachs consistently on the sell side of a stock, we figure he's got a lot more shares to unload, and we undersell him. Later, after he's run out of shares, we buy back in. If we see the Nas-100 futures make a sudden spike up, we buy DELL before the program traders get a chance to arbitrage it away. This is easiest after the market has moved up or down 50 points so that computer arbitrage is no longer allowed. The market makers see the future move too, but they have to leave their bid/asks until at least one SOES trader has a chance to hit them for 1000 shares. On the other hand, the market makers have more direct knowledge of institutional buying than we do, so the system is sort of fair. I'm going to try front-running other day traders by short selling dead cat stocks with lousy fundamentals. My practice short for today of this nature was PRST. Yesterday it was selling at 8.6 times sales, at about $23. Amazingly, 18 months ago on less sales, it was briefly a $100 stock. They just announced lousy sales and lower earnings, and dropped to $17+. I expect them to keep dropping for the next week or so. -- Carl