Dear All,
The amount of bashing and pointless flaming on this thread is incredible. It must mean *something*, but I don't know what. If you go way, way back into the SI archives, ok, maybe not that far, there was a time when people posted useful comments that helped us improve our services.
I recall very intelligent discussions about how Island worked, how Datek Online worked, and we figured out all sorts of ways to improve our services from listening to the informed opinions of our customers on this thread. And we got to learn in precise detail how we were better and worse than our competitors. And a lot of lurkers hopefully learned alot about how the markets work in the process.
I have to admit, that does not happen too often anymore. And that's not arrogance on my part, that's just nostalgia.
On to some news you can use.
1) On Active days, Datek Online is a little sluggish at the open. We hope to have the order processing upgrade completed and implemented within 2 weeks. I will post updates here. It will be faster, MUCH faster, and do all sorts of cool things that our currrent system does not do. In hindsight, I did not expect such rapid growth and we got sidetracked by newer services such as...
2) Options
If you read my posts, they have been pretty consistent. Options by the end of '98. Probably sooner.
3) Short Sells
Let me offer some information that, from reading the past 200 posts, I am guessing peeople dont know.
You cannot short sell when the "BidTick" is down on NASDAQ. AMEX and NYSE have similiar rules based on the last trade price.
OK, so given that, lets suppose a stock is going down and you try to short sell. Well, your order goes into a buffer, but since the last bidtick was down, you cannot short sell it. The stock keeps going down. eventually it stops, and there is an uptick. Now your shortsell gets to come out of the buffer and interact with the market. You have short sold. (love this terminology) But now, the stock starts going up. That is the way stocks behave a lot of the time. They go down down down, then up up up. If you are lucky or smart, they might go down up (shortsell goes through) down down down (you cover) up up whocares what happens next, you already made money, and on the next opportunity...
To you, it might look like your order was held until the worst possible time. In fact, Datek Online did what it thought you wanted.
Sometimes, your order may get rejected after being in the buffer for a while. B-t-w, the "buffer" is conceptual. Maybe its a datek online system, maybe its the specialist book down on the floor of nyse or amex.
We want the behavoir of short sells to be consistent, regardless of the order type or exchange. One idea we are always thinking about is just REJECTING any short sell order on a downtick during the day, but that seems a little rude (and actually is against some rules). One component of the new system is that you get a message back, explaining that your short sell order is on hold due to a down bidtick. But you can see that now just by getting a quote. If you see a down bidtick, you might want to cancel your short sell.
The more you know about how the markets work, the more you will appreciate what Datek Online does.
-peter stern
datek online |
