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Pastimes : ISOMAN AND HIS CAVE OF SOLITUDE -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: ISOMAN who wrote (342)	3/23/2000 8:07:00 AM
From: wlcnyc	Respond to of 539

As usual, an amusing response! Thanks. Frankly, I don't mind so much how Fidelity calculates their "margin equity" so much as I mind the fact that there is no where to view the actual market value of one's portfolio - unless you create a watchlist and manually update it. This, and the fact that the heading on the Positions Screen reads "Closing Price" but does NOT really show the closing price for all positions. This is not noted anywhere on the site that I can find. My first experience with ANY investing was a little over two years ago with Web St and I wrote some mighty scathing criticisms of them back in the beginning. Now....after more experience with other brokers, as I have said, I really appreciate the real time updates - positions, balances, etc. They may have problems, but they are on the right track. IMO, Fidelity should have used the money they spent on promoting "Power Street" on improving the system in order to truly be able to handle the "active traders" that they seem to want to attract. As it is, I find it hard to believe that even an "active investor" (my term) would be pleased with Power Street! Since you are not much of an online investor, there is another "criteria" that I would like to hear comments about from your readers. It concerns "price variation limitations". For example, Fidelity has a limitation of 30%, Citicorp has a limitation of 20%, and Web St of 300% and I haven't yet discovered what, if any, it is for ETrade or DLJ. None of this seems to be available on any the brokers' sites. You either have to find out by trial and error or sometimes you can find out by asking but even then you may get different answers and sometimes erroneous answers. In fact, the limitations I listed above are not absolute because there are exceptions but the brokers involved cannot explain them or are not aware of them! LOL The importance of these limitations? For example, it means at Fidelity I cannot enter a sell order for anymore than 30% of the current price. This can be very limiting in today's volatile market. The TCLN I mentioned in my previous message is a prime example. The low for the day was 3 7/8 and it closed at 7 1/8. If I had bought it at the low, the most I could have entered a sell order for at that time would have been approx 5.71! I could resort to calling a broker, but I don't like talking to REAL people! LOL Have a good day! Now that I have retired....time for me to get back to work.....on the web <G> Bill