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Strategies & Market Trends : MDA - Market Direction Analysis -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Les H who wrote (7802)	3/8/1999 11:28:00 PM
From: HairBall	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 99985

Les Horowitz: Seems lawsuits are all the rage on SI as of late. Member suing member or sicking the various law enforcement agencies on each other...<g> Regards, LG

To: Les H who wrote (7802)	3/9/1999 10:17:00 AM
From: Les H	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 99985

NetTrends: Interacting With Online Traders By Dick Satran SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Picture millions of people sitting in front of their PCs or televisions at night actively trading stocks. Two years ago, the idea might have been considered absurd, but now the New York Stock Exchange itself is considering a night session for consumers, a sign of just how far technology and deregulation have shifted the landscape of the brokerage industry. Online trading is just a part of what is happening -- but not a small part. There are now over 7 million online traders, moving billions of dollars worth of stock a day. They comprise one-third of Nasdaq volume, and between 10 percent and 15 percent of total stock market retail volume. And that's just a couple years into the game. But will people actually turn from ''Ally McBeal'' and ''Sports Night'' to tune in ''Channel E-Trade?'' Will the day traders who eagerly chase stocks stay up nights to do the same thing? Already, online brokers wake up to a flood of orders each day from people sitting in front of computers the night before. ''It will happen,'' said Bill Burnham, Credit Suisse First Boston e-commerce analyst. ''Will it be a huge phenomenon? Not in the short term. But in the long term, if it does become a big phenomenon, it will confront the brokerage industry with some pretty big issues.'' There's no doubt that online traders feel passionately about their investing life. They do business three to five times as often as their offline counterparts. Financial writers who cover the online market are likely to get snowed with opinions -- negative and positive -- whenever they write about e-traders. This column received an outpouring after a series of columns last month on online trading. Responses included everything from reports of stock scams to service outages to market tips. But the vast majority dealt with the problem of getting respect -- responding to the charge they are distorting the market and trading recklessly and unwisely, or that they are hooked. And there is a reservoir of negative feeling about how they've been treated by Wall Street's ''establishment.'' Here are some of the e-mails, with only first names listed and not complete e-mail addresses, to protect their privacy: Here is my humble opinion about the online trading problem. The big boys do not like the idea that the little guy can step into the market with a wealth of information at their hands and make a few bucks. We are trading for ourselves with the same information that was once only available to them. -- AF, AOL Why are the professionals so bent out of shape with individual investors' new interest in stock market trading? I think it's outright propaganda. The full-service broker is obsolete. I've been trading online for two years and I am a careful investor. My only loser has been UTEK. -- Viki, AOL. Day trading is not really what the stock market was invented for. But that's the way it is today. It brings some volatility to the market, but when somebody wins, somebody else loses money. That's life, and that was always that way even before the rise of the Net. -- Stefan So far as the terribly sophisticated people at the ''full-service'' brokers are concerned, the last thing my Merrill Lynch broker did was to recommend some Donald Trump bonds back in the late '80s. I had sense enough not to buy, and also sense enough to close the account. I felt really good when I learned that the chairman of Merrill Lynch lost a bundle of his own money (and some client's money) on the Long Term Capital fiasco. -- Joel, Concentric. I don't always make money, and I rarely make a fortune, but it so happens that I've never made an unresearched trade in my life. I spend from a half-hour to an hour every night (more on weekends) researching companies via the Web, resulting in maybe two trades a week, and I have what I feel are solid reasons for making each one. -- Vincent, CompuServe The rules of the game changed abruptly and NOT in favor of the established players (the market makers). Are there addicts out there? Maybe there are, maybe not. Addiction is a disease of an affluent society. Just like there are food, drug, alcohol addicts, I'm sure there are Internet addicts. -- Hasan, AOL. In regards to ''overvaluations,'' I look at it this way. A diamond may be worth only $20 as an industrial tool. However, a man may pay $10,000 for the same rock to put on his wife's finger. ''Internet stock ownership'' has become much the same thing. -- Stan, Journey All of sudden online investing is rank speculation and everything that has to with the Internet is taboo. These are the same full-service brokers, recommending steel stocks 60 years after the industrial revolution. --Eric, AOL What is absolutely incredulous about these tactics the Wall Street crowd is pulling is they are trying terribly hard to say it's all in the best interest of the customer. Not. --GT, AOL. (The Net Trends column runs weekly Tuesdays. While not all comments can be published due to space considerations, you can send them to Dick Satran at dick.satran(at)reuters.com)