Over 2 hours to decide my contested options trade this morning. I was ruled against. AMEX options specialist held my Immediate or Cancel order for over 3 and half minutes - and through a system problem which removed this order from my "Active Orders" display. Then the fill popped up out of nowhere. Their system problem - my liability.
Ah yes, I`m very familiar. Last summer(I think) I was trading TASR options and my SMART order got routed to the AMEX. An hour later after I had flipped out for a few points the AMEX busted all option trades in TASR. The first F`d up part is I covered so instead of being flat and in the green nicely I was short and in the red horribly...the second F`d up part is the AMEX was the only exchange to halt trading in said options. Never gave a reason besides "system problems". My speculation is that some huge MM firm fat fingered multiple orders and was gonna be put out of biz in a matter of seconds so they just did what criminals do...they lied. I have not traded one single contract on the AMEX since then.
http://www.thememoryhole.org/corp/finance/sec_amex_report.htm See link. The report says the AMEX has deliberately falsified documents to government agencies, with the intent of covering up their problems. If you know a lawyer, there's millions of dollars here just laying on the ground............
I think you can specify in SMART routing to avoid specific exchanges.....I'd suggest avoiding AMEX given what you've posted.... SSB
================= They may fix the problem next year with the newly annointed CEO; in the meantime SMART routing will exclude them when you want/configure it, and therefore live its name. :
I've only been trading options for 7 years, but right from the first I heard "Watch out for those AMEX guys". And the few times I got fills there, they never seemed very good. ...bastids...