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Strategies & Market Trends : Online Trading - An Oxymoron? (EGRP, AMTD, NBD, DLJ, SCH) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bob Duncan who wrote (44)	2/5/1999 10:14:00 PM
From: Bob Duncan	Respond to of 50

More info on my Etrade disaster: Just to clarify my last post for the reporter. At one point I had about 30,000 in my Etrade account but I took money out to buy a car and set aside for taxes and also for travel and possibly graduate school, which is why my account eq. was around 14K. This was created from about a 3,000 position as of October of last year, but as I mentioned I attribute more to luck than skill. Also, I forgot to mention that Etrade has did not call me that day, send me an email notifying me of what was going on, or even give me a chance to work something out. (Honestly, I may have been able to get some emergency equity or at least arrange for them to buy the remainly AMTD at a limit price instead of buying 7,500 at market at 63 7/16. (BTW< within 10 minutes of that Etrade margin transaction Ameritrade stock was at could have been bought at 61.) Also, my concern is not so much that I lost money on my account that day, it is that margin implied that I just traded randomly. Considering that I had a stellar track record up until that day, that I had made them 10,000+ in commissions as a customer, and that I was a Power Etrade customer (supposedly with "priority" rights) it was frankly insulting that they claimed they would close my account. (Again, I have received no check from them and at least for a couple days after this incident was still able to partially access my account) MY POINT IS ETRADE NEEDS SAFEGUARDS!!! They should NOT let a customer establish essentially a 1,000,000 position on 14K in equity. What sort of error checking do they use?? All I would have needed was a confirmation saying your order cannot be accepted because of unavailable funds, a broker call back, or something. Instead, I get insulted my the margin dept., told I will be mailed a check, never contacted since then, and never seeing this "check" Isn't life amusing?