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Strategies & Market Trends : From the Trading Desk
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To: steve goldman who wrote (3807)11/17/1998 9:29:00 AM
From: ViperChick Secret Agent 006.9  Read Replies (2) of 4969
 
Steve...just wanted to say how great it is for you to help people understand the behind the scenes action.

Now I just want to tell people of my Waterhouse Story..in case you have a dispute with waterhouse..plus people should know this anyway so you can see what can happen.

I tried to change an option order last Tuesday right before the bell on their webbroker. I was trying to add to a position that I had already bought that day. It wouldnt let me change the order and gave me a time stamp of 16:01:52. It was approximately 3 minutes off. I use an atom clock...and I matched my clock with several sources...including CNBC who showed the ringing of the bell (except remember on the close they can cut away for a commercial and that ringing of the bell is a replay and I dont remember how it happened that day on CNBC)

I immediately called waterhouse.

Now waterhouse could have said...you are a good customer and we will give you a free commission. I would have probably taken that. They could have said..hold on we will check the time stamp.

What they said to me though was this

Out of the thousands of customers that waterhouse has..you are the only one that is calling and complaining. If what you said was true, we would be flooded with calls. We stand behind our time stamp..take it to arbitration...This message was given by a person in Trade Research who had talked to a technical person during this phone call.
THAT WAS THE WRONG THING TO SAY TO ME.

So I went about proving that their time stamp was off and by Tuesday night they were aware that their time stamp was off by about 3 minutes and this was proven by a Waterhouse Agent through me.

Now for the rest of the week, their time stamp CONTINUED to be off and was not fixed until Mondays trading. I also could not get anyone to call me back concerning this dispute.

It seems to me that there should be some SEC rule that governs this kind of thing in terms of 3 days going by where they will not let people trade when the market is open and do not fix a problem. It seems fraudulent to me because I am sure there are MANY people who did not realize their time stamp was off and they were not allowed to trade. Does it take 3 days to fix a time stamp??? I dont know.

So last night after the bell they said they were giving me an accomodation..as if they didn't HAVE to do what they were going to do. they were acting like they were simply being nice about it....yeah right..FOUR TRADING DAYS LATER??????
First they said...we will give you the trade at this price but you have to pay full commission - NO DEAL (and there is another story there about the commission but I wont get in to that)

Second ...they said we will give it to you at no commission on the buy but you will have to pay to sell - UNACCEPTABLE..since I had already sold the position that I had... four trading days had gone by at this point

third...after going to someone that is the head of the department...
they said we will give you the position free commission both ways and some trade vouchers.

Okay I took that just to get this over with

However, anyone disputing a trade from Tuesday through Friday on the Webbroker (and possibly Trade Direct) needs to be aware that their time stamp on your order is off by about 3 minutes and you will have to make an adjustment when you are looking at the market action.
And who knows how long their time stamp had been off. So if you are disputing a trade before last Tuesday..it may also be an issue

Now i have a question
I see a trade on my option after hours that had to be mine because of how low the price is. On quote.com there is no volume listed. I have seen these kinds of things before. So how is this kind of accomodation done on the tape???
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