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Strategies & Market Trends : Waiting for the big Kahuna -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Haim R. Branisteanu who wrote (40205)	5/23/1999 2:15:00 PM
From: James F. Hopkins	Respond to of 94695

HI Haim; Well I'v stoped considering any trades on stocks, I don't kid myself into thinking I can beat the pros when it comes to stock picking, at least not short term trading. So paired trades on stocks are out of my leauge. But take VFINX , if I'm long and at a profit and want to get out at the days high instead of watching the S&P500 sink the rest of the day, I can snub her off with a short on the SPY, call the broker and close the short at market on the close. The trade parts primary purpose is not profit so much as to snub off the Nav on the VFINX at a point I was happy with it or what I had hoped for when I put in the 2pm sell order on the VFINX If the market keeps going up I don't make the trade. This is very short term and don't cost me any real capital. -------------------- Other things I do are also mostly very short term, and at times on margin ( I don't pay margin rates on a day trade ) The USPIX, and UOPIX are both 2x leveraged funds my expence on them is $24 each way..however they are seen in my account as equity, that I can margin on, if I need to even the short fund. This can get a little hairy but I retain enough cash to bail out of a margin trade with out being forced to sell a fund if I don't want to. The 2x funds let me "effectivly" be on margin with out margin calls or rates, and if I want to get bold on a bet also let me ( using them as equity ) leverage out more than I could, my type of paired trading takes "no" extra capital, where I could just buy the qqq up to 50% margin , however if I first go long the UOPIX I can get well over the 50% limit. And on the short side it gets even better, if I'm really sure of things I can get 400% short my capital using the short fund. ( it's already 2x , and I can short 2x my equity and my account sees the fund as equity not a short) but this is not for the faint of heart. <G> Jim