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Technology Stocks : Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Glenn D. Rudolph who wrote (10525)	7/15/1998 8:46:00 PM
From: Robert Duncan	Read Replies (10) \| Respond to of 164684

Glenn and others: I had a terrible experience with Etrade today. As I mentioned before I am a university student (in computer science) and use the money I save from consulting work with Windows NT to play the market. This morning I had some free time and figured I would give a quick in and out trade with options on AMZN a try. Here's what happened: At around 10, when AMZN seemed to be trending downward I put an order in for 13 July 110 puts at market. When I clicked the mouse button to place the order, the market price was at 3. I waited five minutes. Updated the price, and the puts where at an ask of 2 3/4. Great I thought, Etrade is slow but at least maybe I got a better deal. 30 minutes later, the ask is at 3 1/4, and still no confirmation. At this point I am no longer excited about getting the option as it is 45 minutes later and still no confirmation. Finally, 1 1/2 hours later I called Etrade from my job (at this point I went in to do some NT work on a network) to find that my order went through about 2 minutes before I called at 3 1/2!!!! Immediately I checked the price - AMZN puts were bidding at 2 7/8!!!! I have never been so furious in my life! Anyway, I think they closed the day at something like 2.5 so I am down what is a pretty penny for a college student on a trade I intended to play with for MAYBE 15 minutes. Anyway, is this sort of thing normal? Etrade has done this to me before, but never with an execution this late (1 1/2 hours) at a price much higher than I ever intended to pay! It is just ridiculous that this happened - but my question is is Etrade responsible for this or can trades really take 1 1/2 hours to fill??? (At, I might add, a price that just happened to be the HIGH during that time period) If any of you have some advice for me I would appreciate it - maybe I am doing something wrong?? Thanks in advance to all. Robert (the literally at this point poor college student)