To: carranza2 who wrote (105480 ) 4/8/2014 4:02:08 PM From: Maurice Winn 1 RecommendationRecommended By dvdw©
Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 218871 He got this bit right: <Can you trust your broker? Regrettably, many chapters of the history of financial markets must be devoted to recounting the myriad innovative and ingenious ways brokers have devised to steal from their clients. > I was robbed in 1986 by a Wellington broker [Jarden] who front ran my order to buy 40,000 NZOG shares. Next day, they said "Oh, we couldn't get them at your price." But they did and the sale was reported in the newspaper next day [as share sales were back then]. The share price zoomed after my buy so they decided to keep them for their own account. I went to complain to the stock exchange and the guy said I had a good case. Unfortunately, I was being transferred to BP Oil International, London in a few days so couldn't pursue the criminal scum. So I am well aware that there are outright criminal scum. Reading his interesting speech, he does not disavow electronic trading. He just says it needs tidying up. He likes the way Interactive Brokers does it. Sure it's messy, but as he says, losers leave and people are trading less as they find they are paying too much to trade. Competition will sort things out. Being robbed is very annoying. I never did go back and hunt them down. I think the firm went bust in the 1987 crash. The way I handle buying and selling is watch the markets, see the trades, then pitch my price near enough that it should be nabbed pretty soon. Normally I don't miss out as markets are reasonably stable and my trades are low relative to the daily volume. HFT Flash Crashes are special opportunities which are had to catch when they are short. But sometimes they are deep and wide as in 2008 when there were lovely profits to be made, and I did. No need to hurry. Just mosey up to the markets, gawp around at all the stuff on fire-sale and pick some juicy bits. That's what Warren Buffett did with WFC at $21 and GE too if I remember rightly. He could have got it cheaper but couldn't believe his luck most likely. His scale of buying is so large he can form the bottom so no need to wait too long. Mqurice