Terra Nova Trading and Townsend Analytics have a track record of outrageous behavior, along with significant conflicts of interest regarding trading practices that continues to this day! Individuals who are current or potential customers may benefit from my direct experience in having been one of the principals that started Terra Nova Trading.
A little background, and then at the end I will explain how individual customers of Terra Nova branch offices are affected. I started Terra Nova Trading with Jerry Putnam in 1994. While I was a floor trader in the S&P 500 futures pit at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) in 1994, I heard about Townsend who is across the street from the CME and asked if they wanted to program my software invention SCANSHIFT (www.scanshift.com) based on my background as a former U.S. Marine Corps pilot. They said yes, and a patent was filed in October 1994 and the patent was issued in November 1997. While recovering from a hit and run accident in 1995 where my hip socket and pelvis were shattered in 12 places, my partner Jerry Putnam and Townsend Analytics got together with a S&P 500 trader I introduced them to, Lewis Borsellino, and took another idea of mine, that being to start a SOES room, Chicago Trading and Arbitrage. They needed Borsellino to bring traders to it based on his reputation as a major floor trader. The three of them then played real dirty. They threw me out of our shared office, destroyed alot of my personal papers and then had some Chicago cops
come to my residence and throw me around when I was still on crutches. This set back my hip rehab a good three months. Borsellino hung with Townsend and Terra Nova until he got involuntarily cut out of his share of the Archipelago ECN (also known as the Terra Nova ECN) that was a direct result from the revenues from their Chicago Trading and Arbitrage, SOES room. Borsellino filed lawsuit number number 98CH001363 in the Circuit Court of Cook County, Illinois on February 2, 1998. Within a few weeks, the case was settled by Townsend and Terra Nova's lawyer, Dan Web, the famous superstar former U.S. Attorney now in private practice. Why was it settled so quick, and with Borsellino only getting $250,000 plus the old office and real tick machines forever? The word is that Terra Nova and Townsend, both 50% owners of Archipelago L.L.C, the ECN also sometimes referred to as the Terra Nova ECN, sold 20% of it to Goldman Sachs for a cool fifteen (15)million dollars shortly thereafter. There was a story around the CBOE this week that Paine Webber is looking or already bought a substantial piece of the Archipelago ECN for twenty five (25) million! They also got a confidentiality agreement out of Borsellino, where he could not discuss what he knows about Townsend or Putnam. Of course they did not bother to tell their plans about Goldman Sachs to Borsellino, or to let him know that they had opened up what is now over 25 branch offices around the country that uses point and click software funded from the SOES room revenues. As far as me, Townsend still has a significant stake in my SCANSHIFT patent, yet I have not seen a dime of any monies that I was supposed to receive in future projects involving Townsend and Terra Nova. Nor did I receive a dime when SCANSHIFT was actively being pushed by Townsend. By the way,the range bar on the NASDAQ level 2 screen was my idea based on the right side of the SCANSHIFT range extension rectangle, blended in with the color scheme from the Angle of Attack bar from SCANSHIFT. Year and year out, all I get from these types are threats and more threats. Thus I figured, that it is about time that other people besides myself and Borsellino should know the truth. It comes down to raw greed, and it is this raw greed of Townsend and Putnam that screwed me and continues to screw Terra Nova customers.
How does this greed of Townsend and Terra Nova affect customers who use a branch office of Terra Nova. First customers should deal with individuals who have integrity, of which Townsend and Terra Nova do not have any. Terra Nova and Townsend actively trade against the order flow that comes into its ECN for its own account. Why would any one ever want to have the principals of an ECN trading against your order flow? You may have a resting order to buy something on a limit, and Terra Nova will take down a market order to sell for its own proprietary accout which could have filled your limit. The Island ECN, owned by the principals of Datek, which is much bigger does not do that. They got out of proprietary trading along time ago. Other ECN's do not trade for their own account. That brings up another good point, the Island ECN pays one tenth of a cent for adding liquidity and only charges a quarter cent for removing liquidity. Yet, Terra Nova, pumps big volume through Island, and then charges a hell of alot more. There is much more to this story which I will tell in the future.
Fane Lozman |
