Thanks, gbh. Some of what you quoted, is particular to JB Oxford, rather than "standard" procedures - especially the muddle with cancellations.
Regardless - one of the biggest problems with Datek, have been busy servers. Today was another bad day. Granted, it was a heavy volume day in the markets, but I would hope that Datek counts with heavy days in the market, and makes sure that they have more than enough capacity, precisely so that it can handle extra load. When that much is at stake, you "overbuild". Can you imagine, if Boeing made airplanes for "average" weather, that couldn't handle adverse meteorological conditions? Same principle. Datek knows damn well, that heavy volume will happen, and likely will only get heavier, as more people trade (and as Datek solicits more customers). The plain fact, is that the system is not robust enough to handle the load that's put on it. This is nothing new, I, and many others have spoken about this at length, and I'm sick of talking about it.
Still, even with all the problems, on the whole, executions have been good for me today - I actually got several improvements on both listed and OTC orders. The problems have been: orders that disappear for up to a minute, so you don't know if it "got" to Datek or not (then it appears suddenly on Daily Activity, or Open Orders, after a minute or so) and cancelling for 5-10 minutes. And of course, the obligatory "service unavailable" messages.
I've complained about busy servers, and praised good executions seems like forever. There was a notable improvement late Feb, early Mar, and now it's back to the same. Datek is like an unreformed alcoholic (my apologies to people who struggle with alcohol addiction). |
