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Pastimes : ETRADE Sucks! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Gil Gilbertson who wrote (539)	10/22/1997 12:27:00 AM
From: AlienTech	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3262

onlineinvestors.com

To: Gil Gilbertson who wrote (539)	10/22/1997 3:07:00 PM
From: taxman	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 3262

"I had four Oct40 puts on Starbucks that were to expire last Friday" why didn't you sell them at market? "I had no buying power due to the market decline" is this etrade's fault? "they would not execute an order without funds in the account" why should they? "Etrade elected to excercise my puts and placed me short 400 shares at 40 even though the stock was at 37" would you rather etrade let the puts expire worthless? "I thought, fine, they will just credit my account at the end of the day because the puts were in the money" in the money equity options are exercised, not settled for cash. "I had to answer a $5000 margin call" did you expect a free ride? regards

To: Gil Gilbertson who wrote (539)	10/22/1997 4:02:00 PM
From: Emec	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 3262

I had a talk today with a friend og mine who was a broker for 15 years with Paine Weber and AG edwards. He is a friend and has no reason to lie to me. He explained how trading works and advised me against trading with any of the deep discount brokers since they trade on secondary markets. He explained that in most every case, you will pay more for a NYSE stock through a deep discount broker such as Ameritrade, Etrade or Scottsdale than with a non deep discount broker. The reason is that deep discounters trade on secondary markets such as the Midwest Stock Exchange where the bid and ask are higher than on the main market. The deep discount broker gets an additional kickback on the trade, generally 2 cents per share. The customer generally pays 1/16 to 1/8 more than if they went through a "regular" broker so on a 1000 share purchase, you may pay $62-$120 more for the purchase-there goes your commission savings. The worst part is that the customer doesn't even realize that he got screwed because he is seeing the bid and ask no that exchange so thinks he got a fair price. Similar story for NASDAQ stocks although he said you sometimes can get the same price. Generally the executions will be beter with a non deep discount broker. Think about it he said. How cna they possibly make money at $8 or $9 per trade. There is additional "commission" being funneled through there somewhere and it is in the stock price you pay.