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Well, what you refer to as poor execution, others might call a lousy broker,
period. Datek's servers have been down in a similar fashion a lot recently.
Cyber (www.cybertrader.com?) has an interesting feature - a 1-button get-me-
out-of-everything. Don't have Cyber, so I don't know what kinds of orders it
does. By "lightweight", I mean no Level II data, just order entry. Two or
three mouse clicks to enter an order. For the volume you do, though, most of
the high-end brokers will waive the trading system fees and charge commissions
only, plus maybe exchange fees for data, $50 a month if you want Level II. For
that small amount, you might try it for a month to see if you like it. I would
caution you NOT to become so entranced with it, you forget to use your current
methods. It can easily happen.
BTW, any Internet connection to a broker is prone to these problems. You might
check in your area to see if you can get a direct dialup connection. Cyber
even offers frame-relay direct connections, very expensive, but could be worth
it for high volume traders.
In a message dated 11/15/98 5:24:33 PM, jaustin@xxxxxxxxxx writes:
> Thanks for your reply. I use the BMI feed and average 100 - 150 round
> turns/month on the higher volume NASDAQ stocks. If I understand you
> correctly, you are saying that Level II data would allow me an additional
> 1/8th of a point per trade. I would consider that a big deal indeed if it's
> true. Any thoughts on this?
>
> Let me give you an example of what I mean by unacceptable execution. On
> Fri., Nov. 13, I was long INTC and MSFT and was nicely up in both trades
> when I decided to exit at 11:30. First I needed to move to the order entry
> page and that took several seconds as the server response was sluggish. I
> entered the INTC sell order, hit the send button and got the message
"server
> unavailable", try another. That required another login and a re-entry of
> the sell order. In short, it took 3 1/2 minutes to get out of that trade
> and then I had to repeat the process for MSFT. It took about the same
amount
> of time and combined, these delays cost me over 1/2 point and compared with
> previous similar occurrences, that's not bad. The previous week, I lost
7/8
> of a point on INTC alone in the same fashion. It is happening to me at
> least once a week.
>
> Correcting this problem alone will pay the difference between $10 and $20
in
> base commissions, but what about the fees? You mentioned "lightweight"
> execution systems and I've checked them out, but who would you consider
> "heavyweight" execution systems? I would really appreciate opinions as to
> what firm is really the best at this.
>
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