To: FranW who wrote (2419 ) 5/30/1998 2:41:00 PM From: FranW Read Replies (2) | Respond to of 6931
ALL: Post #3 From former M/M Just like investors, MM Hate to take a loss. So 9 times out of 10 he will now sell 2000 at 1.00 making him short 4000 but with an average .81. At this time he would love to see a seller at .75 so he can cover his short and make a few bucks. But instead the market keeps moving up. Now it is 1.00 to 1.25 and here comes the buyer again at 1.25. He doesn't want to loose the call so now he needs to sell 4,000 at 1.25 to keep his break even point above the bid. Now he is short 8,000. Market moves up to 1.25 bid 1.50 offer here comes the buyer now he feels he must sell 8000 here because "stocks don't go up forever". Now he is short 16,000. And so on and so on. If the stock keeps moving up, before he realizes it he could be short 50 or 100 shares (depending how big his bank is). Finally the market closes for the day and on paper he may look allright in that his "break even" price may be around the closing price. But now he has to figure out how to entice sellers so he can cover this short. It is important to note that if this happened to one MM it has probably happened to most all of them. Some ways MM's entice sellers; Run the stock up with a "tight spread" in a fast market, then "open" up the spread to slow down the buying interest. After it has "cooled off" for a little while lower the offer below the last trade right after a small piece trades on the offer then tighten the spread so that the sellers feel they can take a "quick profit" by "hitting the bid" on the tight spread. Once the selling starts the MM's will walk it down quickly by only making small prints on the way down with the tight spread. Another way is by running the stock up in the morning, averaging up their short then use the above technique to walk it down in the afternoon. Hopefully after doing this for several days, it will demoralize the buyers. The volume will dry up and the sellers will materialize thinking that the game is over. Contrary to popular opinion, MM usually Do Not Cover in Fast moving markets either Up or Down if they are short. They Short More. They usually try to cover after the frenzy is out of the market. There are many other techniques they use but the above are the most popular. This technique works about 9 times out of 10 particulary in a BB market. However that is because 9 out of 10 BB stocks are BS. Remember what I said above. Most MM's don't have a clue as to the value of a Company until they get trapped. If the Company has solid fundamentals and a bright future. Then the stock will do very well. And the activity that caused the situation will prove to even help the future stock activity because it created an audience. (Sorry I had to do this in 3 parts. That's Yahoo) < EOM> Hope some may find this interesting, Dave said something about getting a M/M to post, This was the closest I could get :) BTW I am long on TGSK & TSIS & GNNX FRAN