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To: DaveMG who wrote (13211)	8/2/1998 2:35:00 PM
From: Jon Koplik	Respond to of 152472

Dave - the only place I have definitely seen the total margin debt outstanding figure is (occasionally) when a newsletter writer chooses to feature it in an article (usually one predicting a collapse in stocks "as soon as you finish reading this sentence ..."). I am not sure where it is regularly available. A few guesses - start digging around the NYSE's website (I am assuming they have one. Maybe they do not, because on some level they fear that the Internet will eventually cause the NYSE to serve no useful purpose). Or, look at a "real" copy of Barrons (not the Internet version); because ... there is this huge section of numbers and statistics in the middle of each (real) copy of Barrons. (I personally have never looked at that section, due to my belief that fundamentals alone will guide one to success in markets in the medium to long run). Thoughts on margin debt -- like a lot of numbers (percentage cash in mutual funds comes to mind, among others), total margin debt outstanding will often be used in ways that make no sense, if one understands a few things. First of all, since stock index futures did not exist until the early 1980's, and allow you to be long the stock market for about 20% equity, I would assume the whole pre-1980's vs. post-1980's numbers (on margin debt) should have some sort of "disconnect" between them. Also, OTC derivatives (I've read that Microsoft has extensively issued OTC put options to institutional investors wanting to place a bet on MSFT's eventual decline from its absurd level) also change the natural demand for margin debt. Also, just a simple arithmetic thing -- you will sometimes see someone considering only the dollar amount of margin debt, totally ignoring it as a percentage of total stock market value (or total household wealth, or total consumer debt, or other things I can't think of immediately). I am sure that margin debt will contract, if and when we ever have a "meaningful" decline in the stock market, but I am hard pressed to think that you can make much use of the data now, by looking at the rate of increase over the course of the past few years. Jon.