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

To: Randy Majors who wrote (11292)	3/19/1999 5:30:00 PM
From: Dan Clark	Respond to of 16892

Randy, Many Thanks. Looks like I still have one or two things to learn. :-) The funny(?) thing is that I knew that Datek uses Island for it's limit orders, but I didn't realize that there was such a speed difference. I guess I look forward to LIMITed trading. Again, many thanks! Regards, Dan.

To: Randy Majors who wrote (11292)	3/19/1999 6:03:00 PM
From: Sir Francis Drake	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 16892

Datek is IMHO by far the best online web-based broker out there. During the last few weeks there has been a dramatic improvement in speed of servers (the famous "speed burst"), and at least in my experience, there hasn't been any morning slowdown even on high-volume days. This improvement in speed, which also includes fast pop up of Daily Activity and Portfolio pages for confirmation purposes, has altered the way I trade. I no longer use market orders (which I was forced to resort to when the speed was slow), and limit orders are a snap. I am firmly convinced that you will simply not be able to get faster and better executions of ISLD orders anywhere. I have an independent LII on a separate modem, and I see just how fast my orders show up - in a word, it's INSTANT. Mind you, these are limit orders - market orders are a different kettle of fish, but I simply don't know how they are routed and handled, so I can't speak intelligently about it. I suppose they either gather whatever stray ISLD shares are left over after exact ISLD limit orders are matched, or maybe Snet the order out? As to complaints about quotes - I certainly sympathise, and don't excuse this. However, I use other brokers, including Cyber and I gotta tell you - this is not a problem isolated to Datek. There are days when Datek has perfect quotes on the streamer, and Cyber's are frozen. Or I get logged off because the software crashes on Cyber - a problem I NEVER have with Datek. I'm not defending bad quotes on Datek - all I'm saying, is that NO broker has perfect quotes (this can also be due to bad feeds coming from quote providers). Just because you go to an expensive direct order entry broker (such as MB Trading or CyberBroker), does not mean your quotes on LII will be always good. It is my conviction, that if you are an active trader, you simply MUST have independent quotes, and cannot rely on any one broker's quotes. Thus, Datek's occasional bad quotes affect me very little. Yes, the e-mail confirmations are spotty. Personally, as a trader, I don't care - I look to the Daily Activity page. What would be nice is if somehow the confirmations could pop up actively so that I don't have to go to a separate page - but maybe that's asking for too much at this stage (Datek - if you want to get very ambitious, you might think about this). So yes, there are problems at Datek. But for $10 a trade, very few "nickle and dime 'em to death" fees, low margin interest, excellent executions, I say we are doing extremely well. A lot could stand to be improved: customer service, adding options and checking etc. However, all this costs money. Where is this going to come from? Datek doesn't sell order flow. Advertising? You gotta be kidding. Look at the competition - I do so every single day (in addition to Datek, I trade with two other brokers every day), and I can tell you - we are getting a hell of a lot for very little money. I bet at Schwab there are fewer problems with IRA conversions, you have relatively good customer service (Datek's is a joke), and you get various perks - but do you want to pay $30 for a trade? I use TradeStar, because they have options - and so I have some $ there, and some stocks I trade - but again, it's far worse to trade actively with them - no comparison, Datek wins hands down. So, I say - thank your lucky stars Datek is as good as it is. Would I like Datek to improve - hell yes. But I'm realistic. Everything costs $ - and right now we get a lot of bang for our buck.

To: Randy Majors who wrote (11292)	3/19/1999 10:17:00 PM
From: Ken Katz	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 16892

Randy, I also experimented with different types of orders and , unfortunately, my experience with limit orders was not as great as yours: 1. if a limit order is not marketable, i. e. between ask and bid, for example, it does go to Island instantly 2. very different story with marketable limit orders, say, sell at limit $66 when the bid is $70 -- they did not show up on Island and were treated AS REGULAR MARKET ORDERS with several minutes execution time