wine man-- If your calls were in the money at the close on Friday, Waterhouse could have simply shorted the stock at the close, exercised your options, and delivered them to close the short, thereby guaranteeing $62.50 per option (- commissions) regardless of where the stock opened on Monday. I believe the options agreement you sign says Waterhouse will do something along the lines of "its utmost" to exercise your options if they're in the money and you don't provide instructions, but I don't believe they are contractually obligated to do so. If it were a larger amount you could perhaps seek monetary recourse or whine to their management, but for $625 - probably $100 in commissions, there's probably not much you can do. Perhaps ask for a few free options trades?
Waterhouse has kind of a nasty option commission schedule, as I discovered when I closed out April AMD options. They have the best money management features I have seen though. If you engage in large options transactions, I'd recommend you try Brown & Co, eDrefyus, ndb, or any of several other firms which have an $x + $1.50 per option commission schedule (for example, at Drefyus x = $0, at Brown $x = $15, at DLJ $x = $30 and the $1.50 is $1.75)-- Waterhouse's up to 1% of principal even for > $100K transactions is very annoying in today's world of practically friction-free equity transactions.
-Eric |
