Dennis - Yes, you bring up some substantive issues. Of course, there are no real stops on the NASDAQ anywhere - only 'emulated' stops that your broker provides; and not all web-brokerages provide them. Usually say on a stop loss for a long (a sell stop) they will set it up so that as soon as the offer hits your price OR a trade occurs at your price, they dump your position with a market order. Only listed stocks have "real" stops, that set in "the book" as standing orders. NASDAQ has been talking for a while about going to a central limit file that would allow standing stop orders, by the time that happens we could all be retired.
Schwab offers that type of emulated stops for a lot of NASDAQ stocks, but they won't accept them a lot of time (in popular stocks like CSCO) if the market's doing much (unless you already have them on) -- liability concerns I guess.
SWS/MBT Margin calculations are quite strict (and easy to get hit on), you're right and that's a big issue/problem. If you carry stocks overnight, you need to be a real accountant at first to make sure you don't "blow yourself up" with a margin call, because of the strict fed rules on "pattern day trading accounts" which is how they classify MBT, Cyber, ATTN, etc. There are some advantages, though it's a two-edged sword. If you can remember to not get into the same issue again, after you've carried it overnight and exited, then things become somewhat simpler. But, this is one of my #1 complaints about DOE brokerages - and I'm sure they see it as one of their bigger headaches as well - IMHO DOE will never hit the "big time" with the great mass of everyday position traders, until this is resolved (arguably, it may not anyway). Probably, it's the sort of thing NASD really pushed for, to try & trip up the daytraders (& their brokers). It works, they've sent a bunch of customers back to web-brokerages because of that rule.
ISLD book, is available live on the web - not the best way to get it, though. I think there is a way to see it from RT III now, anyone know?
Good trading, -Steve |
