Another Datek Horror story
So I place an open market order (you know the one Datek says will be filled in under 60 seconds) yesterday for 1500 shares of EGRP. I put in the order at 09:21 (before market to line up) and by 09:36, nothing. No sell. I am sweating now because EGRP opened at 34 5/8 and has now slid to 33 1/2 on decent volume. I call Datek. The trader says "our systems screw up sometime so cancel your sell order and re-enter it".
Thanks a lot.
So I do what he says and enter it at 09:40. Now EGRP is at around 33, good volume with upticks. Nothing for another 6 minutes. By the way, this is also an open market sell as well. So I Cancel my order again.
Third time I enter my order at 09:50. The order gets filled as a partial order in lots of 27, 73, 111, 289, 1100 all at around $30 5/8.
By the way, it executed the order at 09:58. I waited over 7 minutes for the MMs to steal my money, holding back the buys so they could profit.
$6000 gone.
If I had used another broker (I have a friend who uses E-Trade and says he sold his 2000 EGRP yesterday morning, no problems at 34) this would not have happened. I suppose its partially my own damn fault because I've been screwed around like this by Datek on EGGS the morning before, but it was a small lot and I still profited a bit.
So I called Datek, got a run around, demanded like an angry customer to talk to a supervisor and spoke to "Sean".
Sean was refreshingly intelligent and took the effort to listen to what happened to my trade. He admitted that I did lose money because of the delay in the market sells and said that it was possibly due to insufficient buyers. I didn't agree with that because several upticks occurred in attempts to sell, also I have Level 2 allows you to interpret buys or sells.
In short he said he would try to "compensate" me and that he would have to talk to his bosses. But he promised he would make a real effort on my behalf.
Needless to say that losing $6k threw my trading off yesterday and am still reeling from what happened. I can't get over the feeling that I was robbed by people on the floor with some implicit cooperation by Datek. It's so easy to hold buys back and let the price drop, but it can only happen if Brokerages either encourage it, or worse, turn a blind eye.
Now I wait to see if the system that contributes directly to my loss can compensate me.
I feel like sheep being guarded by wolves.
mctusa@yahoo.com |
