Please Help - Etrade cost me $2,500 today

The spec was probably in the bar watching CNBC at 4:05pm, laughing at the people who bought IBM.

 

you've really got no business making that kind of trade, with that kind of broker

that's the lesson you learned for $2500

 

Not trying to be an ass, but I think the bigger issue here is that you were trying to make .20 off IBM in an after-hours earnings play???

Why not just go bet everything on the spin of the roulette wheel?

Putting aside the fact that the trade was ridiculous, if you are trying to scalp .20 moves you should not be doing it on anything but a direct access broker. Would you take your Honda Accord to the NASCAR track and try to compete?

 

I think we all have some horror stories to tell you about. Here is one of mine, which may shed some light on your likely outcome:

I placed 2 market orders before the market opened with 2 different firms: Brown and Company and Scottrade.

I wanted to see how each filled my order and what price I would get from each.

The stock I was interested in was EP. It had closed the day before at 7.10.

Brown and Co. filled my order for 3000 shares @ 7.10.
Scottrade filled my order for 3000 shares @ 7.90.

I was very surprised at the difference and called Scottrade to ask why such a high price on the fill. They said the stock gapped up and that is the best they could get it at, even though it was a market order on the open.


I said ok fine. The stock then went down to about 7.50 or so. I decided to sell off the 3000 shares I had gotten for 7.10 and take a .40/share profit or $1200 from Brown and Co. shares I got for cheap.

I then kept the other shares from Scottrade for the longer haul. EP closed the day at about 7.40.

When I got home that night from work, I had a message on my answering machine from Brown and Company saying that there was a mistake on the price I had bought the shares at. The message said I had actually bought the shares at 7.90, not 7.10 and that it was just a typo error.

I went balistic! I was pissed because instead of a $1200 gain, I had in fact just realized a $1200 loss!

I called Brown and Company and they said, "well you should have known that that price of 7.10 was just an honest mistake and I should have known that was a mistake because that price was so far off what any reasonable person would expect"

I was like ???what? The stock had closed at 7.10 the night before, so why would I think getting filled at 7.10 was so obsurd?

They said the only thing they could do was back out my sale at 7.50 but I would still have the shares @ 7.90. I realized of course all they were doing was buying the shares on the open market for me at 7.40 which I could have done anyways!

After that f*&& up, I dropped Brown and Company.

I have heard that I could have disputed it since I did get a confirmation of price and quantity of the trade, but I decided to just drop it and move on.

I was more pissed that they didn't email me or call me at my work number so I could at least try to figure out what to do during the day.

Live and learn I guess.

Good luck to you.

 

You don’t seem knowledgeable about the markets so it’s a little hard to feel sorry for you. I wish you no harm but you really have no right to be in that trade. It’s too big of a trade for someone with little experience plus you’re using a 3rd rate execution system. The first secret to learn in trading is realizing you cost yourself 2.5k and putting the blame anywhere else will only cause you to do it again.

I also want to explain to you no market marker had free reign over your order and it sounds silly you even saying that. First it’s NYSE that’s the specialist system. Next it’s after hours so it’s not even the specialist system it’s just ECN’s pretty much. No Ecn is blowing off your order if it’s a profitable trade for them. The order got frozen in etrade and odds are it did that because it wasn’t sure if your order was filled so to prevent you being short it freezes everything.

I hope you get your money back because I root for the little guy but I don’t see it happening.

 

Etard am inept.

I just had them confirm a cancel of a wire and they put it through anyway.

I only keep $ there out of inertia and some benefits that only the inept Etrade can provide.


Basically, they are clowns.


To the poster of this trade issue, you need to find out where you order was routed. If it went to the NYSE , they may have held your order.

If it went elsewhere, you should have been able to cancel.

You have to know what the rules are in order to hold Etard accountable.

 

To the OP.


Aside with all the problems regarding Etrade...You made the mistake of picking AUTO [a dark book, has nothing to do with ETRADE, they're an ECN that's quite convinient when you need to sell 500,000 shares of some volume less stock that has 300 shares at each price level and a 10 cent spread] for your excecution... which means that nobody would hit you because nobody would see you. next time when you want someone to hit your offer and you dont want to show your hand, try ARCA with a reserve to display only 100 shares. Works wonders.

 

Where are you getting that 'auto' information from. Doesn't sound right

 

Well... I use AUTO for my trading all the time, it has several advantages. However, Im not sure if Etrade has AUTO [the ECN] or if they only call it AUTO because is some automatic function... so you're probably right.

 

Thanks!