Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Non-Tech : Datek Brokerage $9.95 a trade -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sir Francis Drake who wrote (10908)	2/6/1999 7:56:00 AM
From: TheWay	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 16892

New Margin Requirements Due to recent market conditions, Datek Online raised the minimum maintenance requirements for select volatile stocks and all short positions. In addition, the equity account ratio at which positions in a margin-enabled account may be closed out has been increased to approximately 10% from 5%. We raised the minimum maintenance requirement for certain securities from 30% to 50%. To view a list of these securities, please refer to volatile stocks in the Portfolio area of our Helpdesk. Due to recent market conditions, Datek Online raised the minimum maintenance requirements for select volatile stocks and all short positions. In addition, the equity account ratio at which positions in a margin-enabled account may be closed out has been increased to approximately 10% from 5%. We raised the minimum maintenance requirement for certain securities from 30% to 50%. To view a list of these securities, please refer to volatile stocks in the Portfolio area of our Helpdesk. For all short securities trading above $5.00 per share, the maintenance requirement has been raised to the greater of $5.00 per share or 30% of the current market value. If the short market value is below $5.00 per share, the maintenance requirement becomes the greater of $2.50 per share or 100% of the current market value. Lastly, if at any time your account falls below approximately 10% equity, or if market conditions warrant, Datek Online reserves the right to immediately close out some or all of your positions with or without notice, at our sole discretion. If we can provide you with further information please contact our Customer Support Team at 1-888-Go-Datek (463-2835) or e-mail margin@datek.com. Thank you. Sincerely, Margin Department Datek Online Brokerage Services Corp. 1. Ameritrade AMTD 2. Amazon.com AMZN 3. At-Home ATHM 4. Books-A-Million BAMM 5. Broadcast.com BCST 6. CMGI Inc. CMGI 7. Cytel Corp. CYTL 8. Data Broadcasting DBCC 9. Double-Click DCLK 10. eBay Inc. EBAY 11. E-Trade Group EGRP 12. Excite Inc XCIT 13. Go2Net GNET 14. Infoseek SEEK 15. J. B. Oxford JBOH 16. K-Tel Intc. KTEL 17. Lycos Inc. LCOS 18. Marketwatch.com MKTW 19. Siebert Financial SIEB 20. Ubid Inc. UBID 21. Yahoo Inc. YHOO

To: Sir Francis Drake who wrote (10908)	2/6/1999 9:11:00 AM
From: Ginger Bates	Respond to of 16892

Sir Francis Drake: Your letter was very well written and I'm in total agreement with it. I got to the point that I just had to write to Peter Stern from Datek about that same problem (extremely frustrating isn't it!!!) and I wanted to paste part of his response here for people to read. >..."Simply, making the web sites work faster is our number one technical priority. We have a lot of incremental changes in the works, and some have already rolled out, so its getting better, but I will be honest. It won't be perfect until late Feb, when a new protocol rollout will eliminate web speed barriers....> I don't think Mr. Stern will mind my quoting him when it's to enlighten some frustrated Datek customers. I have been very happy with my experience with Datek - but like you have put so very well in your letter, the last few months have been frustrating. But from the sounds of it, this problem is a major concern of Datek's. I'm looking forward to the end of February and to some faster transactions!! Good luck all! Ginger

To: Sir Francis Drake who wrote (10908)	2/6/1999 12:42:00 PM
From: wmwmw	Respond to of 16892

Sir, Your post is the best since a very long time in this thread. I also like to see datek to put out a separate Level II, with an order entry system, for a monthly fee or even $20 per trade. The current services also exist so customers can choose between these two as they like, for those willing to pay more fee, these is no more any delay in any time for their trading. And this will attract other daytrading firms' customers to datek and build up Island volume, making the datek execution even faster. I also hope an option trading system with RAES interface shows up in datek so the only thing for me is to put all my money into datek and trading every thing here.

To: Sir Francis Drake who wrote (10908)	2/12/1999 3:41:00 PM
From: Peter Stern	Read Replies (21) \| Respond to of 16892

Dear All, Yesterday we decided to suspend taking orders for six minutes. This let us fix one errant back-end data server so that we could continue on with a trouble free day. Dear Sir Frances Drake, We are glad you feel that we are really great at some things, and sad you feel we are not so great at other things. I cannot argue with your assessment of our services. Services are, by their nature, subjective. They are based on perception. I could tell you how many more orders we process how much faster, and how many more customers we serve in how little time, and how much smarter our order routing systems have gotten, and how much less we have technical outages, but that won't really change your perception. I can tell you that we plan to be the very best online brokerage that can exist. In fact, Datek Online has already redefined what it means to be an "online broker", by giving customers direct all-electronic access to the stock markets, electronically bypassing the usual broker food chain. We plan to do whatever it takes to be the number one online brokerage. We feel that the best way to do that is to offer the best level of online brokerage service. The big issue you mention is slow web access to your account during peak times. Hopefully, it won't shock you to learn that that is our number one technical priority. period. We built our entire system from scratch. We know what we are doing, we know where we want to be, and we know how to get there. We also know when we will be there, when the next big speed burst will be. Nobody would like us to be there faster than us. In the meantime, we get a little better everyday. A network tweak here, a database tune there, it all adds up. We have a lot of smart, dedicated people building and running these systems. We are trying to hire more. We spend all the money we can when money is the answer. In the meantime, until we can get our systems to be so much faster than our customer load thats speed isnt even an issue, we have ramped down our marketing. Nobody wants unhappy customers. And we are developing and growing our customer support as fast as possible. We realize that our technology is in control of your assets. Few things are as important to people as their money. I think the world would be a better place if people cared more about their neighbors and their health than their money, but thats not the point. The point is, this is serious e-business. If a system goes down, thats my grandmother's money, or yours. We know that. We do everything we can to make sure systems don't go down, and plan on getting them up fast if they do. -Peter Stern Co-founder & CTO Datek Online