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Technology Stocks : Primestar/TCI Satellite (TSATA) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: captaintime who wrote (313)	4/14/1999 3:00:00 PM
From: Jim S	Respond to of 442

If stops work for you, then don't allow my experiences to influence you. But, what I have found is that MMs look at stops as an offer to trade at that price, especially when a fairly thinly traded issue begins to trade more heavily. The MMs have the ability to move a price significantly to "sweep" stop orders. If you don't believe it, just take a look at some stock that suddenly hits the most active list. Bring up the stock on quote.com and just watch; you'll see a normal range of trading for a while and then, a sudden flurry of trades well outside that range, and then the price returns to where it was and trading continues. That's your friendly MM "sweeping" the stop loss orders into his inventory to resell at the higher price. Several months ago, I watched this happen to NOVL, except that after the trade price dropped by about 20%, it suddenly jumped to about 20% above the previous range and then resumed the 'normal' trading. Thanks to watching the SI thread, I realized that some ambitious MM had "swept" the stop losses for longs and used them to cover the stop losses for shorts. Now, that's a quick profit! For the same reason, I don't trade options with "market" orders; it is an invitation to get screwed. But, do what works for you. jim