Jon, congratulations on continuing to operate with a much higher level of service than most brokerages over the past few days.
Those who were not ther in 1987 (I was not invested in the market, but I did watch it on TV) do not understand how good they have it, if they were able to trade at ALL over the past 2-3 days.
In 1987, the "tape" was running two hours late. Unless you were on the floor, you basically had to guess about what price you might get, and place market orders and cross your fingers. The NASDAQ market makers simply didn't answer their phones, and so trading was effectively halted in NASDAQ issues.
I'm sure that some people experienced significant problems with Datek. While I did not trade all day on either day, I did execute trades, and experienced only moderate delays.
This is so much better than getting a busy signal trying to reach your broker by voice or touchtone, that there isn't any comparison.
I'm finally on Rodney's side on this one. Any ability you had to squeeze in a trade on Monday and Tuesday was just an unexpected bonus. Datak gave us much more than the ability to squeeze in a trade, and seems to have worked very close to normal.
I have seen people bitching on other threads about not being able to get through to their brokers, and complaining that they should have anticipated this, and made sure they had enough phone lines and enough brokers. But it is NOT reasonable for ANY broker to anticipate a market like this, nor to provide the capacity needed to trade it with 100% reliability.
Datek came very close - I'd bet closer than most anyone else. Thanks, Jon, Peter, and all what what you were able to achieve! |
