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Strategies & Market Trends : Option Spreads, Credit my Debit -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: OX who wrote (1366)	4/16/2000 1:11:00 PM
From: Bridge Player	Respond to of 2317

In many cases the Schwab computer system will not recognize a valid option symbol when you go to do a trade online. One of their option traders told me it was a capacity issue. That can happen even when their quote window gives a valid price quote for the option. The rep said that if a customer asks, they will phone down to their IT dept and have the option entered, however that may take as much as 20-30 minutes to be avail to trade electronically. If you want to make a trade via their option trading dept, they can phone the order down to the floor themselves and you can get it entered that way. But you have to talk to a rep to make it happen. This can happen not only on spread orders but also on an outright buy or sell. BP

To: OX who wrote (1366)	4/16/2000 1:30:00 PM
From: Mark Z	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 2317

(once it couldn't find a valid option ticker for one of the legs I gave, but could have been a temporary glitch). Actually, this is not a temporary glitch but a 'new' problem at Schwab. They have to manually enter all option symbols into their system & not infrequently in the past 45 days or so their system just doesn't know of a symbol you want to trade. Two ramifications: you can't trade that option online & when you phone it in, it takes upwards to 5 minutes for them to process the new symbol & place your trade. They accept no responsibility for any price erosion due to the delay in processing the symbol. Otherwise, the advanced option execution screen works well. Just keep in mind all trades on that screen are 'boated' (manually reviewed) so, again, expect some delays (usually not significant, occasionally upwards to 10 minutes) in getting your trade to the exchange. Also, no ratio spreads (or purchase of x00 shares/writes of anything other than x calls) are allowed on those screens; they must be phoned in. I.e. buy 1000 CSCO, sell 5 calls is not permitted; you must either leg into the shares (buy 500 & sell 5, buy another 500) or leg into the buy-write (buy 1000, sell 5).