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Politics : Ask Michael Burke -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: yard_man who wrote (30594)	8/5/1998 11:07:00 AM
From: Bipin Prasad	Respond to of 132070

tip, Broker really makes big difference when we need a quick action like yesterday and today. Hope you find one soon. InSook

To: yard_man who wrote (30594)	8/5/1998 12:41:00 PM
From: Knighty Tin	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 132070

Tip, I hate to be a conspiracy buff, but there is a dirty secret called "bag" men on the floor of the options exchanges. Nobody will admit or can prove that they exist, but I have met many of them, some of whom said, in their cups, that they were the bag men for various firms. What a bag man does is, he executes a customer's trade for the brokerage firm. Now, if the trade stays flat or moves against the customer after 10 minutes or so, it is booked to the customer. But, if it happens to go in the customer's favor, the bag man keeps it, and punts it out of his account at a profit, most of the time to the original customer. He then shares the profits with the brokerage firm that placed the order. This is mostly done to individual accounts, as institutions have lawyers and the ability to check time of sales, etc. And, most importantly, the ability to pull the key and make a brokerage firm persona non grata. There is no real defense against being bagged. Your broker can just claim inefficiency, and probably has 1000s of angry letters from customers telling them how inefficient they are. MB