Subject: "Proposed Regulation FD: File No. S7-31-99"
Author:  "F.R.Anderson" <SMTP:bobcat3577@earthlink.net> at OPC 
Date:    04/20/2000 9:25 PM
     
     
To whom it may concern:
    As an individual investor, who buys and sells equities both through a broker
and online, I would like to take issue with the argument presented in the public
statements made by The Securities Industry Association on April 6, 2000.  It is 
perhaps best summed up for me by the following sentence.
    "But it is also the few analysts operating independently of, and in
competition with, each other that can relentlessly pursue an independent line of
inquiry and ferret out negative information that management would rather not 
disclose or would prefer to disclose at a time of its choosing and with its own 
spin."
     I fail to see the truth of this statement. If all company information were
made public, complete with it all of its "spin" and suddenly devoid of the 
"mystique" which currently surrounds it, analysts would not lose their ability 
to analyze, or to ferret out those bits and pieces of information which the 
company chooses to try and hide. Competition would, in fact, increase, as would 
the need to produce accurate and careful reports, if, for no other reason than 
the public would share the vast amounts of information that must be, if I am to 
infer anything from the above paragraph, currently available only to analysts.
   Further, the vast majority of individual investors are hungry for knowledge
about the companies that they buy and sell.  Much of what exists in the way of 
information now are opinions, however educated, by professional analysts, that 
we, as individuals, can only analyze on a purely speculative basis or take on 
blind faith.  The dissemination of the information that analysts use to form 
their opinions would allow all interested investors to form opinions, based on 
equal information, and to discuss and analyze more thoroughly the various 
aspects of the information without the rampant quesswork that exists now.  I, 
for one, would place more value on an analyst's opinion in such an environment.
   Sincerely,
   Bob Anderson
   dw_madrone@hotmail.com