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Strategies & Market Trends : From the Trading Desk -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Carl van Rooyen who wrote (4136)	2/3/1999 11:41:00 PM
From: Tim Luke	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 4969

carl, if you want i will send your story to the wall street journal to see if they want to do a story on how these guys conduct business

To: Carl van Rooyen who wrote (4136)	2/4/1999 7:17:00 AM
From: John Carragher	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 4969

Carl Experiencing problems with ameritrade over a week ago in confirming trades. I want to go in and make another trade but don't want to move until confirmation of the old one. The same thing on a cancel or change. I understand all these on line orders are cleared manually... The trade could have gone through and the system not updated. I never make another entry until I receive confirmation. Wrote to them a week ago but when are they going to beef up the systems. No response... They do print out have difficulty updating trades on some accounts to call the broker. ha and wait on line for a broker... The part that kills me is these outfits are trying to build more customers and don't have the systems to take care of existing ones. How about the screw up yesterday on etrade who ever heard of updating code during the week while trading is going on. stupid imo John

To: Carl van Rooyen who wrote (4136)	2/4/1999 8:15:00 AM
From: steve goldman	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 4969

Martha, Good morning. First off, let me say how sorry I am to hear about the problems you are having. Below I will provide two answers...one as to what they are legally entitled to do, and one as to what they are morally entitled to do. And believe me, there is a difference between the two. I can tell you in my experience, errors happen. Yet, my firm has always had a policy that when we goof, we eat it. Its that simple. We clearly define who goofs, ie. did client call in the new order without cancellng the other?,etc. (clients' goof) but if we make the error we eat it. If I had told you nothing done, UROUT, words not to be taken lightly, then I would have eaten the error. YET, and this is where I think you wont like what I am going to write....as ludicrous as their behaviour, as negligent as their behaviour is, you are held to what was done, not what was reported. ie. they tell you UROUT...they tell 10 1/4 (when it was really 13), they tell you nothing done, whatever the case, you held to what was done, not what was reported. I had never heard about the 48 hour deal, but anything at all bridges the moral issue, and anything over the next morning (by the time the firm has a chance to reconcile the trades and realize that you are long and extra k) is just flat out negligent. I am not sure the exact policy behind it but i would guess the reason is that the exchanges understand that errors andmistakes occur. Can you imagine what a disaster Etrade was yesterday. Did you catch that? they went down twice. the third largest online brokerage firm down for 3 hours..ugly. I am sure they have thousands and thousands of complaints from clients with tens of millions in losses. Hopefully it isnt so bad, for the clients that is. But I can bet that they will call on their insurance to cover some losses, but outside of that, I am sure they will kindly as they can, say "take a look at paragraph x, limitation of liability etc.". Now, that said, the second order, you might have some ground to stand on. I couldnt tell if you did this, but if you did a cancel and replace, ie. "buy 1000 abcd 11 cancels 10", then the second order is only good when and if the first is cancelled. You should never end up with 2k. This is different than if you straight cancelled the first, got an out (which you now know doesnt mean anything at certain firms), and placed a brand new order. Anyway, I am sorry to hear about your problems. Good luck resolving them. Perhaps calculate your loss and ask for somefree trades or something to cover it.That is always easier going down. If you ever want to discuss our firm and what we do, and why we are considered one of the best trading desks on the street, please feel free to call. Regards, Steve@yamner.com

To: Carl van Rooyen who wrote (4136)	2/7/1999 1:06:00 AM
From: M.R. Davis	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 4969

I had similar problems at Waterhouse - cancelled an order actually on the phone with a broker - but the broker said he couldn't give a confirmed "OUT" - the trading room was too busy. Eventually called and got routed to some high level guy who confirmed an "OUT" and placed a trade for me - didn't fill - so I cancelled online and split it into smaller amounts. 2 days later I find 5000 extra warrants in my account - it took me a long time to sort the mess out with Waterhouse - however they did "eat" it themselves and apologized - while still saying that their system cannot confirm "OUTS" when it's a busy day. Waterhouse - crappy trading system, but very good customer service - safe for investing - hopeless for trading. Mark