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Pastimes : The Naked Truth - Big Kahuna a Myth -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Defrocked who wrote (17638)	2/2/1999 2:52:00 PM
From: MythMan	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 86076

yeah, like you. with so many up days we forgot what you looked like! -g- btw, did Phil see his shadow today? ho ho ho

To: Defrocked who wrote (17638)	2/2/1999 2:57:00 PM
From: John Pitera	Respond to of 86076

Defrocked, I have noticed that as well.. Message 7616118 I Just looked at uty.x---it has the biggest oversold reading on the 5 day Rsi in over a year, and the Deepest oversold reading on the 14 Day RSI, so we may be near a short-term bottom, in the next few days, but we should see even lower lows in the next 4-6 weeks.(IMO) The UTY.x gave us an early heads up as it broke its 200 Day MA 2 days ago. John

To: Defrocked who wrote (17638)	2/2/1999 3:09:00 PM
From: John Pitera	Respond to of 86076

The put buyers have been AWOL lately: the put/call numbers have slipped to the high 20's % in the last few days. :Bears Cast Gloom Over Options Market By Dan Colarusso Senior Writer 2/2/99 2:18 PM ET For the past two weeks, the put/call ratio-a measure of investor optimism-has been posting some of its lowest numbers in recent history, showing a disregard for protective puts. The put/call ratio, which contrarian options strategists like to see at least around the 40 level, has spent a few days in the high 20s and low 30s before spiking to the 38 mark at midday. A 38 put/call ratio means that 38 puts have traded for every 100 calls. To the professional, fewer puts traded means that more uneducated speculators are playing options for upside swings, a strategy that's worked well in the past six months. "It may be time for the market to breathe out," said Jay Shartsis, the options head at New York's R.F. Lafferty. "We've had two weeks of terrible numbers, and people became accustomed to saying, 'So what?'" Add to that a Chicago Board Options Exchange Volatility Index that jumped 11% to 30.79 this morning, and the bears' doom and gloom may finally be upon the market. The VIX measures the prices of near-the-money options on the S&P 100 index and generally gets used as an indicator of fear in the market. One trend that's starting to emerge, according to traders, is the use of synthetic put positions on Internet stocks. Options players will short or sell the underlying shares and buy "back month" calls to get an upside potential without laying out the capital to buy the underlying. "We've seen it in some index plays, Amazon (AMZN:Nasdaq) and America Online (AOL:NYSE)," said one trader with a major options firm. Bulls were circling Cisco (CSCO:Nasdaq) just hours away from its earnings report. It's not surprising that, even though Cisco's shares were down 25/16 to 112 11/16, prices for its calls were still high. The volatility component of those February calls is so high leading into the earnings report that even a falloff in the share price doesn't put too much of a dent in the premium. The February 115 calls, for instance, traded more than 5,700 contracts and had fallen just 1 ($100) to 5 ½ ($550). In other corners of the market, put-sellers of a few months ago were buying back those contracts today. In Microsoft (MSFT:Nasdaq) this morning, an institution closed out a position of more than 10,000 January 125 puts that expire in 2001. Microsoft had sold off more than 4 ¾ to 168 3/16 today after the federal government accused the company of falsifying a video demonstration about problems with a proposed modification of Windows 98. Meanwhile, the International Securities Exchange, the group developing an electronic options market, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission for exchange status today. The group plans to begin trading in early 2000 on 600 of the most popular options listings. John