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To: Jeff Jordan who wrote (716)	1/10/1999 3:29:00 PM
From: Colin Cody	Respond to of 1463

Jeff, "free" commissions? I would not want that for several reasons: I might expect to find the broker to be bogged down with every chincy tomdick&harry on line with them. I have Ameritrade, for example, they offer $8 commissions (but I always seem to be charged 2x to 3x that amount), their system is SO BOGGED DOWN that I can't even log on to trade sometimes!! I get a message to try again later!. If it is "free" commissions, how do you suppose they pay the rent & utilities around there? Chances are they offer free commissions with "buy/sell at market orders" only. That way they can give you a poor execution price while the Market Maker they have "an arrangement" with gets a better deal on the trade, and then the MM sends a "payment for order flow" to the brokerage. I have no problem with stated up-front payments for order flow. But with this free commission deal I am wondering how good a price I will receive on my market orders??? 1,000 shares and 1/16th worse fill = $62. The order flow pmt might be $20 of that. Heck, you'da been better off paying $26 to a firm like Wall Street Access and saving the $62!! For WEB BROWSER based trading, I am pleased with Wall Street Access. I virtually never am denied access to my account, ALTHOUGH I see they've started off 1999 with a huge ad campaign, and if lots of customers sign up, maybe they'll slow down too. The reason I have Ameritrade is that WSA limits you to 5,000 share trades. I have some penny stocks, where I might trade 100,000 shares at $0.02 a share. This is a royal pain to do with WSA, IMO, though they won't admit it. So last year I just transferred my penny stocks to AMTD. If I could get the usual same level service from WSA on a 100,000 penny trade for their standard 5,000 share $26 commish, I'd not use AMTD with their $23 and under "unlimited share size" commish for the same trade. Colin