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Strategies & Market Trends : The coming US dollar crisis -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: RockyBalboa who wrote (5656)	3/30/2008 2:53:36 PM
From: Tommaso	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 71475

Here's what happened. It was largely my fault, because I typed SKY instead of SKF. This was in after-hours trading. I had placed a limit of something like 110. SKY had a bid of 33 then but the ask was set at something like 200. So my ordered executed and I had a hundred shares of SKY at more than triple the closing trade. I immediately called the 800 number and got a guy who was sympathetic but said after-hours was all automated and there was nothing he could do. He said call back before 8 a.m. the next morning. Next morning I got a guy who just told me politely but flatly he couldn't do anything. He then consulted someone else and said no, nothing could be done. I said "So I am out $8,000" and he said I was. Before the conversation started, the answering system told me that I could participate in an interview if I wanted to, so I asked to be switched to the interview. First question was to rate my satisfaction on a scale of 1 to 10. I pushed "1". Then it asked me if I had made a mistake and really meant to punch in "10" and I confirmed I meant "1". The program recorded my spoken explanation. I did not blame the guy I talked to but I did use the phrase "unjust enrichment" to describe the trade. About an hour later (and after much inner commotion) I looked up my brokerage account online and found the trade had been canceled. In fact, they had gone ahead and bought me the SKF at $500 LESS than I had offered. I would have been happy to pay a heavy fine just to have the SKY trade "busted." This was all with Banc of America Securities. I do not blame them, but I do think that the after hours mechanism ought to flash a huge warning saying, "YOUR BID IS MUCH LARGER THAN THE CLOSING TRADE!!!!" I know that options trading online simply will not accept out-of-range bids or asks. My own reaction is to decide never again to place an after-hours order. There is seldom any real need to do so.