While most financials are banned, not every one is, and a lot of non-financial stocks got smoked off the open. Could've also been long ZION- see that thing trade? Point is, he certainly could've been long overnight, but he could've also made that trading pre-market and/or shorting the open.
Echotrade rejected our short orders with no notice. That is ALL shorts. I definitely did not want to be long only and had to cancel all my orders at the last second. Me, Shreddog and PatrickQ woulda all been up 500 to 850k according to our spreadsheet calculations. With the ES locked limit up all you had to do was look at SPY to figure what price to use. No doubt it was the opening of my lifetime and I had to watch. Bummer
Yeah, we warned our traders about the Up limit, and about the list of non-shortable stocks. I stayed out (due to other issues, obviously)....but we had some great openings, another new record set. I have to say that I wouldn't blame Echo or any other firm for any of this. This is totally uncharted territory, this absolute governement intervention in free markets is "Communist China" in my personal opinion... and with all the changes yesterday to short sale rules....we sent out a dozen updates and IM's and audio updates all morning. Hopefully someone in the gov't will come to their senses, and soon. Don
Sadly, there will be some traders and their families financially destroyed by this over at the CBOE. Think of the thousands of short call positions that were not trading yesterday, as premium was zero, and they open up at $5-$10 dollars. I guess these people just weren't "big enough" to save.
While I obviously dont want anyone to get "destroyed," With all the speculation about bailouts, and gov't interventions whirling around the markets, I think holding short overnight was incredibly risky in this type of environment...
Yup. Amazing how many people have missed 5, 6, or 7 figure days for want of $5k of computer hardware and 1 hour to fill in a second set of broker account opening forms. I know one guy who even owns his own generator. Good rule of thumb - if you don't plan for it, it WILL happen, at the WORST time, and you will KICK yourself in the ass for not preparing properly.
This is terrible advice. Trading is not just a game of percentages, it is also a game of odds. A 0.01% event can wipe you out if the loss will be high enough. That's why you don't sell 10,000 out the money XLF calls at 0.05 the day before expiration. If you go short or use leverage, or even if you only buy high beta stocks on reasonable size, then you need a backup, end of story.
Of course, I agree about the odds.......different issues however. "Gambling" on making a penny or two on an overnight risk vs. a daily strategy that works is not the same IMO. All the best, Don
Everyone can make a mistake, but what really annoys me is that there is no explanation or "we're sorry" from noone on what happened. A very frustrating day.
Same with my firm. Seems like a common practice in the prop industry. I guess retail traders get better treatment but they do pay for it.