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Non-Tech : Datek Brokerage $9.95 a trade -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: CynicalTruth who wrote (7848)	4/14/1998 9:37:00 AM
From: pat w.	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 16892

john, my friend i got to learn and thanks.

To: CynicalTruth who wrote (7848)	4/15/1998 9:23:00 PM
From: Randall Thomas	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 16892

<<Datek has stated they are not a market maker... but does that mean they have no inventory? People on this thread have stated that they can short almost any stock they want through Datek. Think about that..... >> As much as I dislike Datek's order handling procedures and disowning of responsibility to their customers' risk and loss caused by their mechanical failures, I actually disagree with the idea that Datek can profit from this downtime directly. Basic concepts: 1. Datek doesn't care what you trade or if you make or lose money. 2. I am not sure if Datek still makes markets in OTC stocks but orders in stocks that they did make markets in the past were not sent to their trading floor as far as I can tell. It is possible Datek put fraudulent information on my confirms and in fact did handle those trades as principal and failed to disclose so, but my understanding of their order handling procedures indicates this was never the case. 3. Datek always lets you short stocks regardless of availability because they do not check to see if they can borrow the stock in question when you place your order. Stocks for which there are simply NO shares available to borrow are shortable through Datek with no problem. This is not because of some secret huge inventory Datek carries. It is simply that they allow the short to go through immediately, regardless of availability of borrowable shares. This is probably the only positive feature of Datek, in my opinion. 4. Datek, from the beginning, has disowned any responsibility to their customers for loss caused by their own mechanical failures. Given their bizarre delay in starting work on orders placed before open (this has a lot to do their dual-routing approach and the fact that isld DOES trade before open) this was a very wise move, as it sets no precedent of responsibility. The only way I know to approach this is not be dependent on a broker that has such online outages combined with extensive hold time for verbal order delivery. I think people who have suffered such losses and continue to use datek simply do not realize that this simply is NOT acceptable. I tell people in the industry that I work with that datek sometimes does not start to process an order placed at open for minutes and they do NOT believe me.