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Strategies & Market Trends : How To Write Covered Calls - An Ongoing Real Case Study! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tuck who wrote (11152)	7/4/1999 10:40:00 AM
From: Mark Z	Respond to of 14162

Tuck - If your order was > 10 contracts, that's probably the problem. If not, you should be able to ask Ameritrade to go to time & sales and take that to the exchange. If Ameritrade won't do that or they can't get the exchange to honor time & sales, I'd consider another broker <g>. My experience has been that what you lose in commissions with fuller service brokers you more than make up in better fills - moreso when it comes to options than equities. The problem with spread orders is that the order literally sits in a specialist's pocket and if (s)he doesn't think to look at it from time to time, you may never get filled. There's no electronic tracking of spread orders. I generally call my broker when I see I'm due a fill and have them look at & document the current prices i.e. they're now a 'witness' that I'm due a fill. I then ask them to 'status the order' which means they call down to the floor & the specialist digs through their pockets and says, "Oh yeah, forgot about this one" or, if the price moves against you in the interim, well, at least it lets the specialist knows he's got an order from a customer who's willing to be a pain-in-the-a@#$ about things and they'll generally remember the order should the prices move back to a point where a fill is due. Another trick is to try to time your call such that you can get price improvement. I.e. if you ask for a net credit of $1 1/2 and the current natural moves to a net credit of $2, call the broker & have them status the order THEN. My experience has been that you'll get the better pricing.