Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Non-Tech : E.Schwab problems -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Randall Thomas who wrote (128)	4/16/1998 10:13:00 AM
From: pae	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1401

re: Mayer practices. I have run across anecdotes of Mayer's attitude toward Schwab customers over the years... No program trading. If they catch a string of trades in different stocks in like sizes coming from 1 Schwab customer, they will back out the trades citing "no program trading." So if you try to synthesize an index by picking 5, 10 or more components use a different broker. No breaking large blocks into smaller. A customer broke a 20k block of shares into 1000 shares increments in 1 day. Mayer reversed the trades and had Schwab growl at the customer for violating some fine print restriction. If you deal in large blocks, be patient with large orders or use another broker if you want to 'soes' it. My largest complaint was that (as of last July anyway ... I left) once the sum of your buys for the day exceed last nite's calculation of buying power, you no longer get autoexecution but must wait for the manual boat desk to recalc your buying power: sales over the course of the day do not effect the stale BP number in the autoexec front end. My conclusion is that Schwab is targeting the long term retail investor willing to pay extra in both commission and execution for the warm fuzzies of being barraged with constant advertising saying "we're great" and a staff willing to explain the difference between a stop and limit order several hundred times a day. Anyone expecting professional (as apposed to mass market) execution will get a series of lengthy answers about stop vs. limit orders regardless of the question asked. Good luck.