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Non-Tech : Datek Brokerage $9.95 a trade -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Augustus Gloop who wrote (14312)	3/16/2000 9:27:00 AM
From: briank	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 16892

I'm moving All my datek to Fidelity. I've have a small cash account there now and my employer's 401k is administered through them as well. I am truely fed up with datek. Poor service, this recent margin change hurt me big, and no options trading (which I could have used to protect myself in this latest tech wreck. I don't understand how datek can ask to be taken seriously when they don't even offer options trading. There is more to this game than cheep commissions.

To: Augustus Gloop who wrote (14312)	3/16/2000 11:15:00 PM
From: Shane Venem	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 16892

From Thestreet.com Brother Can You Spare $50K? As you may have already heard, margin activity climbed 8.9%, to a record $265.2 billion in February, following a 6.5% rise in January. Charles Biderman, publisher of TrimTabs.com, noted the Nasdaq's move down to begin the week coincided with a decision by Datek Online Brokerage to raise margin requirements on many "highfliers" or make them margin-restricted (verboten) altogether. A Datek spokesman confirmed the firm "toughened" margin requirements on 78 stocks this week, as reported by The Wall Street Journal. He declined to provide a list of the stocks affected. Biderman said other online brokers have enacted similar changes in recent days, although sources at TD Waterhouse and National Discount Brokerages, for example, denied having done so. Charles Schwab did not respond to a request for similar comment. Still, the Federal Reserve's tactic of "targeting the highfliers by jawboning" the NYSE and National Association of Securities Dealers regarding margins is working, Biderman argued. At the same time, there's been more than $18 billion in cash takeovers of public companies in the past two weeks and $16 billion in stock buybacks, he said. So while momentum favorites are suffering from liquidity problems, "there's money flowing into the checking accounts of market pros" because of the buybacks and leveraged buyouts. That money is finding its way into Dow and S&P-type stocks and then, because of "herd followers," everybody is now on the "new bandwagon," Biderman continued. In other words -- momentum traders go where the momentum is and aren't necessarily wed to tech.