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Non-Tech : Barnes & Noble (BKS) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: r g potgieser who wrote (951)	5/3/1999 5:22:00 AM
From: American Spirit	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1691

Whatever the situation, nice price to buy BKS right now. Get is while you can in low-mid 30's. Ain't staying here long.

To: r g potgieser who wrote (951)	5/3/1999 1:26:00 PM
From: stokaholic	Respond to of 1691

for the option there are more than one MM. As to zero sum game: wrong assumption. A MM holds the stock, sells us calls. Let's say price goes up: we sell back our calls with a profit but the MM offsets his loss with the profit in the underlying stock. Also remember the MM's sell to the public, basically they sell time which evaporates. 75% of the options expires worthless. Now that zero sum you might say is paid for by investors who drive the stock price up. For stocks it is not necessarily true either: if a company is really worth more, then paying more for a share is no loss to you. RG Agreed that there is more than one MM for options, and that stocks are not a zero sum game. My point with options was in looking at them as stand-alone instruments (naked). If a MM (or I as an individual) write a call for $3 and it expires worthless, I have made $3, and you have made -$3 for a total of $0. If the call has an intrinsic value of $1, the net of all the transactions with that option is still $0 (less transaction costs). The MMs come out ahead because they do what you said---write calls against the stock, buy them back for less, write them again, buy them back for less, etc. until 75% expire worthless. Anyway, back to the topic at hand. This BKS stock is maddening. Market up almost 100 today, and we are down.