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Non-Tech : CYBERTRADER -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: kaz who wrote (2403)	5/1/1999 6:34:00 AM
From: William W. Dwyer, Jr.	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3216

Hi, kaz Very well written post. Without belaboring the point, let me just say that I agree with everything you said. You present quite a perspective on the issues. Brokers cannot be blamed for allowing traders to fall victim to their sense of greed rather use than their intelligence. I sometimes wonder why it is that, instead of applying old fashioned research to studying stocks and the market, making good investments or trading sensibly, we spend all our time buying fancy computers with fancy software and big-deal data connections and all the other stuff that goes along with daytrading. I wonder which approach Warren Buffet takes. I also wonder how many online brokers take their paycheck and put it into daytrading accounts. Not many, I bet. You know, if one accepts the general consensus opinion that 90% of all daytraders lose money, then it logically follows that anyone who just buys 100 shares of Microsoft (or DELL, or AOL, etc) at the beginning of the year and holds it all year long selling at the end of the year, one trade, two commissions....that person makes more in a year than 90% of daytraders, let alone the "average" daytrader. And with a lot less overhead, a lot less stress, a lot less risk. Anyone (and everyone) who lost money daytrading last year did worse than my little old aunt who wisely bought 100 shares of AOL and just tucked it away. The fact is that if you're not making as much as your broker is from your trading, then something is wrong. And anyone paying an online broker $400 - $1,000 per day (or more) should probably step back and evaluate the situation. Not to mention all the other overhead inherent with such activity, there's certainly an awful lot of money being spent. What aggravates me most is those obnoxious Ameritrade commercials where one lady screams to the kids "mama's gotta trade," then the other lady later confesses she "has mutual funds." Is she ashamed of this? Then there's the one where the silly kid from the copy machine shows his boss how to buy a 100-shares of K-Mart after he's spent all of two seconds "researching" it, ridiculing him for only buying 100 shares instead of 500. Anyone looked at a K-Mart chart lately? These commercials are an insult to serious traders and investors everywhere. Serious money simply cannot be handled in that manner. Do we handle our checking accounts this way? And for them to imply otherwise is offensive to us all. Actually, I think it borders on criminal behavior. It used to be we all thought of lawyers as being slimy and sleezy, but if Ameritrade (and the others) keeps up this crap I'm sure online brokers will eventually get achieve an equally distasteful image. Again, let me say I thought your commentary was excellent and quite timely. Let me say, however, that none of these comments are intended to insult or offend those daytraders who are, in fact, successful at this business. I know there are some. Bill

To: kaz who wrote (2403)	5/1/1999 12:06:00 PM
From: jebj	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3216

>. I really wonder how many daytraders could succeed even if their tickets were free. - Kaz My guess would be about the same number that are successful now. jb

To: kaz who wrote (2403)	5/1/1999 4:43:00 PM
From: JDTrader	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3216

If you are a trader and a consumer like all of us, the lower commissions only help you to make more money, whether you are presently the record holder money maker amongst day traders or just an average day trader who is trying to make it. Lower commissions have nothing to do with whether one knows the market or not. It will benefit us all. The cost of doing business on line has decreased significantly since 3 years ago, yet we have not seen the savings passed on to us. Next, I was not recommending MBTrading as the broker with lower rates. I simply stated that they provide traders with $5 a trade for the first 3 months. That is one step in the right direction, but not what I would like to see as a trader. It is very much like trading, once one lowers the price, we can demand all brokers to lower their prices or business will flow out of that outfit. If you read some of the books published by day traders who made a name for themselves and a fortune for their families in the 1980s, you will notice that they all emphasize on the fact that one of the keys to keeping your costs down and increase the chance of your success is to keep the commission fees below 2 cents a share. Lastly, in order to ensure that I dont give anyone an impression that I was advertising for MBTrading, I share the following with you all but make it very clear that I have NO opinion about them one way or the other. Landmark securities offers commission rates as low as 2.5 cents per share. As you see, if we all demand lower rates from our brokers, we can all benefit--both those of use who make 10k a day or $200 a day. If you can make a profit with $150 a ticket, you too will benefit from lower cost of commission. As to the data feed cost, I am in the midst of negotiating with one of the major data providers and will post how much they charge for providing data to brokers or a group of day traders who have got together and trade at the same location. The fee of $250 or so for receiving data is less than the savings you can have in ONE day if you did 10 round trips of 100 shares (20 tickets) and your commission was $5 instead of $20. As you see, the brokers are not doing us a favor by providing free data if you do more than so many trades. We will all be better off if brokers charged for data and lowered the commission rates, even if you only did 20 tickets a MONTH, rather than a DAY. The bottom line is that We are not getting a free lunch.