Dear traders, Some days ago I made two profitable trades but my broker called me and said the exchange canceled both these trades. After that the broker deleted them from my account. Now I look at "Times & Sales" of my software package and see that the first trade indeed is canceled but the second one is not, i.e. it is shown as a valid trade. I suspect that my broker does some nasty tricks. My question - How could I verify my trades independently of my broker? Thank you for any information, FreeTrader
Is your 'broker' an introducing broker? An individual or a firm? Any one I've heard of. All exchanges have very efficient, computerized order clearing procedures. The bad old days where an exchange might bust a trade 15 mins after the close simply don't exist today. Most order clearing occurs either continuously or in a batch mode, once every 15 mins. From time to time I've heard of brokers using this excuse. Often it seems to be used to take back profitable trades. Any broker who does this is totally suspect. If you got a confirmation from the broker, the position is yours. Case closed.
Is your broker doing some of this? From money.cnn.com... <b>Former money manager convicted: Alan Bond led to his own downfall during cross- examination; family upset with verdict.</b> Bond was arrested last year and accused of defrauding clients by sending unprofitable securities trades to their accounts while directing most of the profitable ones to himself. Prosecutors alleged that the <b>"cherry-picking"</b> scheme ran between March 2000 and July 2001, while Bond was out on bail awaiting trial on 1999 charges accusing him of taking more than $6 million in kickbacks from brokerage firms. They said Bond made $6.3 million from the cherry-picking scheme while his clients lost more than $56 million.
Fidelity did that to me once, with Herzog cancelling the trades saying they didn't update their quotes fast enough. Fidelity and Herzog were both fined (after about a year) and they gave me all the profits from the trade. If you feel you were screwed, call NASD Regulation right away.
This is not the era of Gordon Gekko where traders stood around the end of the day wondering which of the trades that I thought I had aren't matched. Then they negotiated to resolve the differences. Sometimes one of the traders would eat the loss. Other times the two traders involved would split the difference. Often if a broker order did not get executed by the floor trader the broker would make the trader take the loss. Even at that time, broken trades didn't happen a lot. But now with computers? I can't think of a reason why that should happen. Is this the first time or is there a pattern? I hope this isn't in a electronic exchange. Then you know something foul is afoot.
MBG: What do you need in order to prove your case? I had a very profitable trade cancelled out on me 3 years ago also by Fidelity. But Fidelity fixed up my trading records before I had a chance to save it.