Hey Gersh, sorry I did not respond earlier. The brokerages in my case did not act as other brokers often do. For example CyberTrader did not have a market-making arm - as far as I know, but I am pretty sure about that. Schwab of course has its own market-making arm, Schwab Capital Markets, formerly Mayer & Schweitzer. NASDR has a list of violations of that particular MM so long that they don't e-mail the record, it gets sent to you as a stack. It is very impressive, the multitudinous violations Schwab's MM has on its record.
Terra Nova did - TNTO - and better I don't get into their "taking the other side" on client trades right now because that is a complex issue and that one I am leaving to attorneys.
I agree with you that if your brokerage firm is actively trading against you they are in breach of their fiduciary duty to you. On the other hand, many market-makers simply retain an inventory they trade back and forth all day long. One thing I would look into is finding a broker that does not engage in payment-for-order-flow, where your order is sent to a market-maker who will execute your transaction only because they paid for it. They pay for it because they are going to give you a worse fill, plain and simple. This is legal, but it should not be.
The charges I filed concern practices that are illegal. And I'll add this, CyberTrader and MB Trading, brazenly, used as their #1 marketing tool that they had integrity, they did not deal in these kinds of seedy payoffs to influence your transactions. And yet if you were a client of an investment advisor such as Trading Places, they had their hand in the till on virtually every trade. Funny how the biggest crooks shout the loudest about how much integrity they have.
I see Ross Ditlove of MB Trading posted today. This is his SI profile:
Member 3554814
Just so you know in 1999 the New York Times also did an expose accusing MBT of kickbacks, and found out that Mr. Ditlove, in violation of major NASD rules, was soliciting and interacting with clients, running MBT, without having an NASD brokerage license of any kind. Here's a copy of that article I posted here on SI some time ago:
Message 16147384
Philip Berber of Cyber is worse, because at least Mr. Ditlove got a license eventually - Berber never got one at all...
I am sure Mr. Ditlove's attorneys shall - if they did not earlier - advise him to not discuss these issues here. I shall not address him directly, either, as that would not be appropriate, those statements should go through Counsel. |
